The Opioid Epidemic
2017 Nov. 30
Reference Link: http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-opioid-hearing-20171127-story.html
With the opioid epidemic becoming a national crisis, the government is taking measures to step in and aid with prevention and treatment. According to the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “drug overdoses killed some 64,000 people last year… a 20 percent increase from the year before” largely due to opioids. President Trump formed the Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis to attend to the lack in efforts to stop the epidemic.
Several different countermeasures are as follows:
One is, as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie states, “nipping fentanyl and carfentenil in the bud.” This method attacks the source of the problem, the resources that keep this epidemic alive. It requires much stricter rules regarding interactions with China, where the drugs are illegally produced and shipped over to the U.S., and requires better screening of drug shipments.
Another method of prevention is education about the dangers of opioids so that people are more informed about their negative consequences and therefore deterred from misusing them. Doctors should also be aware of this and should either decrease prescriptions or find alternative methods of treatment to avoid drug abuse.
More funding can also go into treatment of addiction, such as using other drugs to “ween users from opioids.” Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen says that there is not enough funding into on-demand treatment, and in order to stop the epidemic the country needs to commit a similar level of resources as natural disaster relief.
The many methods possible in treating the epidemic require thorough research into which measures would be most cost effective, as there is a limited budget and limited resources. This analysis relates to what we learned in class about modeling public health measures in terms of reducing the reproductive number of the epidemic. This number is the result of the varying impacts of different factors related to the epidemic. By comparing the effects of reducing the impact of certain factors via public health measures, one can choose to invest into more impactful interventions to be efficient with the limited funding available. The more intelligently we divide our resources among the different prevention/treatment measures, the more lives we can save, and maybe the epidemic will eventually die out.