Building Effective Public Health and Public Safety Collaborations to Prevent Opioid Overdose at the Local, State, and Federal Levels

Author(s):  
Jennifer J. Carroll ◽  
Rita K. Noonan ◽  
Jessica Wolff

This chapter describes the public health role in the Overdose Response Strategy (ORS), a public health/public safety collaboration between the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The mission of the ORS is to reduce opioid overdose incidents by developing and sharing information about heroin, fentanyl, and other opioids across state and federal agencies. In addition, the ORS supports states in implementing evidence-based strategies to combat the opioid overdose epidemic, especially where those strategies are informed by local data. Teams comprising one drug intelligence officer and one public health analyst work in each of the 24 ORS states. Challenges and opportunities of public health and law enforcement collaboration are described.

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy E. Parmet

In the fall of 2001, the need for a vigorous and effective public health system became more apparent than it had been for many decades. With the advent of the first widescale bioterrorist attack on the United States, the government's obligation to respond and take steps to protect the public health became self-evident.Also obvious was the need for of an effective partnership between federal, state, and local officials. Local officials are almost always on the front lines of the struggle against bioterrorism. They are the first to recognize a suspicious case and to provide testing and treatment for the affected population. At the same time, state officials are needed to support and coordinate local efforts, providing an expertise that may be lacking in many communities, especially smaller ones.But few would doubt that the federal government has a key role to play. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to lead the epidemiological investigation and provide expertise on how to cope with diseases that remain unfamiliar to most physicians.


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Myeong Sook Yoon ◽  
Israel Fisseha Feyissa ◽  
So-Won Suk

In the COVID-19 pandemic, marginalized groups like migrants are disproportionately affected. As panic, fear of neglect, and mistrusting institutions in these groups are presumed to be apparent, their detachment to health services still needs to be investigated. This study comparatively analyzed the level of panic and trust between South Koreans and immigrants who are living within highly affected areas of South Korea. Mann–Whitney-U-Test and Pearson correlation showed panic is more pronounced in the Korean group while having a similar panic display pattern with the immigrants. The immigrant group appears to highly trust the Korean health system, health institutions, local media, and the local native community. Beyond conventional expectations, participant’s average panic score showed a statistically significant positive correlation with items of the trust scale, indicating a level of individual reliance amid the pandemic panic. Thus, ascertaining institutional trust and matured citizenry are identified as factors for effective public health outcomes. During such a pandemic, this study also reminded the public health needs of immigrants as secondary citizens, and presumptions of immigrants’ mistrust in such settings might not always be true.


Drugs ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (13) ◽  
pp. 1395-1418 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Strang ◽  
Rebecca McDonald ◽  
Gabrielle Campbell ◽  
Louisa Degenhardt ◽  
Suzanne Nielsen ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saketh Sundar ◽  

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, headlines ranging from “Coronavirus forecasts are grim: It’s going to get worse” to “Covid-19 cases and deaths in the US will fall over the next four weeks, forecast predicts” have dominated the news (Achenbach, 2020; Kallingal, 2021). The weekly-published Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 forecasts have become the go-to forecasts for the media, the public, and various levels of government (Cramer et al., 2021). These projections, generated from epidemiological forecasting, not only inform the public’s caution towards the pandemic but are also crucial for officials to create public health guidelines and allocate resources in hospitals (Gibson et al., 2020). But where do these predictions come from?


2020 ◽  
pp. 193-215
Author(s):  
John J. Coleman

Benzodiazepines (BZDs) and related drugs are widely used for treating a variety of conditions (with varying degrees of evidence-base), but their long-term use (more than 2–4 weeks) can be problematic. They were originally thought (or claimed) to be nonproblematic substitutes for barbiturates, but it is now clear that they have their own set of problems. In addition, they are commonly, albeit ill-advisedly, co-prescribed or used nonmedically in combination with other drug substances. The result of such combinations, particularly with the opioids, can be lethal. Administrative and statutory actions notwithstanding, it appears that reducing problems with BZDs will depend on a comprehensive approach that includes improved education for patients, prescribers, regulators, insurers, and the public. First and foremost, however, there is a pressing need for the government to improve its drug-abuse data collection, specifically how it monitors drug-related morbidity and mortality. This chapter reviews the information that demonstrates how an understanding of all of the dynamics is essential for designing effective public-health strategies to reduce BZD-associated problems.


2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 43-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott W. Formica ◽  
Robert Apsler ◽  
Lindsay Wilkins ◽  
Sarah Ruiz ◽  
Brittni Reilly ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Maria E. Fernandez ◽  
Patricia Dolan Mullen ◽  
Jennifer Leeman ◽  
Timothy J. Walker ◽  
Cam Escoffery

There are many evidence-based interventions, cancer control practices, programs, treatments, and clinical practice guidelines across cancer control and prevention topic areas that have great potential for decreasing the cancer burden. Nevertheless, challenges in identifying evidence-based interventions (EBIs) that match the needs of community and practice settings, adapting EBIs for new populations and contexts, and implementing EBIs in real-world settings limit the public health impact of cancer control research and its products. This chapter provides an introduction to existing EBIs for cancer control and provides examples of different types of EBIs across the cancer continuum. It highlights issues related to the identification of EBIs, including the evaluation of EBI resources. It also describes processes that can be used to enhance the development, adaptation, and implementation of evidence-based cancer control interventions.


Author(s):  
Thérèse McDonnell ◽  
Emma Nicholson ◽  
Ciara Conlon ◽  
Michael Barrett ◽  
Fergal Cummins ◽  
...  

This study outlines the impact of COVID-19 on paediatric emergency department (ED) utilisation and assesses the extent of healthcare avoidance during each stage of the public health response strategy. Records from five EDs and one urgent care centre in Ireland, representing approximately 48% of national annual public paediatric ED attendances, are analysed to determine changes in characteristics of attendance during the three month period following the first reported COVID-19 case in Ireland, with reference to specific national public health stages. ED attendance reduced by 27–62% across all categories of diagnosis in the Delay phase and remained significantly below prior year levels as the country began Phase One of Reopening, with an incident rate ratio (IRR) of 0.58. The decrease was predominantly attributable to reduced attendance for injury and viral/viral induced conditions resulting from changed living conditions imposed by the public health response. However, attendance for complex chronic conditions also reduced and had yet to return to pre-COVID levels as reopening began. Attendances referred by general practitioners (GPs) dropped by 13 percentage points in the Delay phase and remained at that level. While changes in living conditions explain much of the decrease in overall attendance and in GP referrals, reduced attendance for complex chronic conditions may indicate avoidance behaviour and continued surveillance is necessary.


2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ablah, PhD, MPH ◽  
Elizabeth McGean Weist, MA, MPH, CPH ◽  
John E. McElligott, MPH, CPH ◽  
Laura A. Biesiadecki, MSPH, CPH ◽  
Audrey R. Gotsch, DrPH, MCHES ◽  
...  

Objective: The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act calls for establishing a competency-based training program to train public health practitioners. To inform such training, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of Schools of Public Health managed groups of experts to produce a competency model which could function as a national standard of behaviorally based, observable skills for the public health workforce to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from all hazards.Design: A systematic review of existing competency models generated a competency model of proposed domains and competencies.Participants: National stakeholders were engaged to obtain consensus through a three-stage Delphi-like process.Results: The Delphi-like process achieved 84 percent, 82 percent, and 79 percent response rates in its three stages. Three hundred sixty six unique individuals responded to the three-round process, with 45 percent (n = 166) responding to all three rounds. The resulting competency model features 18 competencies within four core learning domains targeted at midlevel public health workers.Conclusions: Practitioners and academics have adopted the Public Health Preparedness and Response Core Competency Model, some of whom have formed workgroups to develop curricula based on the model. Efforts will be needed to develop evaluation materials for training and education programs to refine the model as well as for future training and education initiatives.


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