Baltimore health commissioner says businesses can help with opioid epidemic (Baltimore Sun)

Tuesday Dec 19th, 2017

Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana S. Wen told business leaders Tuesday that they can play a role in fighting the opioid epidemic and offered examples of how they can help.

Speaking at a breakfast briefing sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Committee, Wen said one thing businesses can do to help reduce the staggering number of overdoses facing the country is to have their employees trained to administer naloxone, the drug used to reverse opioid overdoses.

“If you have a defibrillator available, why not also have naloxone?” Wen said. “It could be one of your employees. It could be someone who is a passerby. You have the opportunity to save a life.

Read the entire story.

Related Stories

Lead poisoning cases fell 19 percent in Baltimore last year, even as more children tested for exposure (Baltimore Sun)

The number of Baltimore children with lead poisoning fell 19 percent in 2017, even as more children were tested for exposure to the powerful neurotoxin.

Statewide, the number of Maryland children found to have elevated levels of lead in their blood held steady even as the number of children tested increased by 10 percent, according to a Maryland Department of the Environment report released Tuesday.

Read the entire story.

Trump declared an emergency over opioids. A new report finds it led to very little. (Vox)

To much fanfare last year, President Donald Trump ordered his administration to declare a public health emergency over the opioid epidemic. “As Americans, we cannot allow this to continue,” Trump said at the time. “It is time to liberate our communities from this scourge of drug addiction.”

When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

Read the entire story.

Azar Unveils Plan to Help Pregnant Patients Quit Opioids (MedPage Today)

States will get help from the federal government integrating services for pregnant and postpartum Medicaid patients with opioid use disorder under a pilot program announced Tuesday by Health and Hu