drug overdose
kkrisberg | June 10, 2016In 2014, more than 28,000 people in the U.S. died from an opioid overdose. That same year, more Americans died from drug overdoses than during any other year on record, with the escalating numbers fueled by opioid abuse. Solutions to the problem are as complex as the epidemic itself, however a recent study pointed to one tool that can make a significant difference: prescription drug monitoring programs.
In a study published this month in Health Affairs, researchers found that implementation of a prescription drug monitoring program was linked to a more than 30 percent reduction in the rate of…
kkrisberg | January 8, 2016These days, there’s a lot of attention on finding new and creative ways to turn around the nation’s opioid abuse and overdose problem. And it’s attention that’s very much needed because the problem is only getting worse.
On the first day of 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published new data on prescription drug and opioid overdose deaths, reporting that more people died from drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2014 than during any other year on record. In fact, during 2014, there were about one-and-a-half more drug overdose deaths than deaths from traffic crashes, with most of…
kkrisberg | July 17, 2015Every day in the U.S., more than 40 people die after overdosing on prescription painkillers. Deaths from a more notorious form of opiates — heroin — increased five-fold between 2001 and 2013. Addressing this problem — one that’s often described as a public health crisis — requires action on many fronts, from preventing abuse in the first place to getting those addicted into treatment. But when it comes to overdoses, there’s one answer we know works: naloxone.
Naloxone is a safe prescription medicine that’s highly effective in reversing an otherwise deadly opioid overdose. Typically, emergency…
kkrisberg | October 24, 2014The statistics describing America’s prescription drug abuse epidemic are startling, to say the least. Here are just a few statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: In 2009, prescription painkiller abuse was responsible for nearly half a million emergency department visits — a number that doubled in just five years. Of the more than 41,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2012, more than half were related to pharmaceuticals. In 2012, U.S. health care providers wrote enough painkiller prescriptions — 259 million — to provide every, single American adult with their own…