Across the nation’s over 3,000 counties, opioid misuse continues to pose a challenge for county justice and health departments, with 130 Americans dying of an opioid overdose daily, according to the National Association of Counties. But the full extent of the rural drug problem doesn’t stop there; it’s impacting families as well as those who work in border control, health departments, sheriffs, and criminal justice systems.
Increased naloxone (Narcan) access and training is a key tool for preventing overdose deaths.
Naloxone is a fast-acting opioid antagonist. This means it can reverse and block the effects of an opioid overdose. It comes in the form of an injection or a nasal spray, both of which are easy to use after a quick training.
Marketing experts say public health advertising often falls short because it incites people’s worst fears rather than providing clear steps viewers can take to save lives.
Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario have been located in ten locations across the province since February 2017. These one-stop shops for youth between the ages of 12 to 25 deal with a wide range of issues that can lead to addiction if unaddressed.
Two new studies funded by the National Institutes of Health show how expanding access to medications that treat addiction has become crucial in fighting America’s overdose crisis, which recently broke a record for the most drug deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period.
The premise is simple: Bring agency leaders to the table and create systems to communicate what they’re seeing. Where are more people overdosing? How can we respond?
The results are particularly important now, says Volkow, when the latest CDC figures indicate deaths tied to meth use increased 35% in one year.
Addiction traps sufferers in perpetual darkness. The road to recovery can be long and lonely and the struggle to find light at the end of the tunnel daunting. Combine these feelings of hopelessness with the social isolation and the uncertainty of a global pandemic, and you have a perfect storm of despair.
Language matters. We know that how we talk about substance use in our everyday lives has an impact on how likely a person is to seek and successfully complete treatment. We can save lives just by changing our language. Seriously.
As Heather Russell prepared for the coronavirus winter, instead of focusing on drinking, she focused on resilience — and on building new habits.
She made sure to get good sleep. She started exercising — she even ran her first 5K race. And she threw herself into her work at an outpatient family clinic, where she assists patients who come in with concerns they have COVID-19.