scholarly journals Opioid Crisis: A Qualitative Analysis of Financial Influences and Addiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Nicole Naccarato ◽  
Noah Wacker ◽  
Lissa Gagnon

The province of Ontario is currently engaged in a public health crisis centered around the use of opioids. As the number of opioid-related harms continues to grow, reports have identified a need for further investigation and understanding of opioid use.  The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the differences in motives for opioid use amongst a diverse population. Data collection occurred by interviewing 14 participants at an Addictions Treatment Centre in Northern Ontario. Theoretical thematic analysis and an interpretive framework were used to analyze participants’ lived experiences with opioid use.  Analysis of the results revealed the theme of financial influence in addiction and recovery.  These insights are helpful in strengthening effective prevention and treatment strategies.  

2020 ◽  
pp. 152715442098194
Author(s):  
Brayden N. Kameg

The increase in prescription and illicit opioid use since 2000 has become an urgent public health crisis. While the opioid epidemic spans racial, regional, and socioeconomic divides, women have surfaced as one demographic affected by opioid use and related sequelae. Certain federal and state regulations, secondary to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, strip pregnant women with opioid use disorders of the ability to engage autonomously with their health care clinician while simultaneously impeding their ability to achieve and sustain recovery. The purpose of this article is to explore current health policy that impacts pregnant women who use opioids. Recommendations to improve care, broadly, will be highlighted to include access to contraceptive services, universal screening for perinatal substance use, and access to appropriate treatment strategies. Policy modifications to facilitate these recommendations are discussed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Policy Analytical Framework was utilized to derive recommendations. The recommendations are relevant to advanced practice registered nurses and midwives who have the potential to treat substance use in women, to women’s health and pediatric registered nurses, and to nursing administrators who are involved in decision-making in obstetric and pediatric settings.


2019 ◽  
Vol 220 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara A Schwetz ◽  
Thomas Calder ◽  
Elana Rosenthal ◽  
Sarah Kattakuzhy ◽  
Anthony S Fauci

Abstract A converging public health crisis is emerging because the opioid epidemic is fueling a surge in infectious diseases, such as human immunodeficiency virus infection with or without AIDS, the viral hepatitides, infective endocarditis, and skin and soft-tissue infections. An integrated strategy is needed to tailor preventive and therapeutic approaches toward infectious diseases in people who misuse and/or are addicted to opioids and to concurrently address the underlying predisposing factor for the infections—opioid use disorder. This commentary highlights the unique and complementary roles that the infectious diseases and substance use disorder communities can play in addressing this crisis of dual public health concerns.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 117822182095339
Author(s):  
Andrea J Yatsco ◽  
Rachel D Garza ◽  
Tiffany Champagne-Langabeer ◽  
James R Langabeer

Opioid overdoses continue to be a leading cause of death in the US. This public health crisis warrants innovative responses to help prevent fatal overdose. There is continued advocacy for collaborations between public health partners to create joint responses. The high correlation between persons with opioid use disorder who have a history of involvement in the criminal justice system is widely recognized, and allows for treatment intervention opportunities. Law enforcement-led treatment initiatives are still relatively new, with a few sparse early programs emerging almost a decade ago and only gaining popularity in the past few years. A lack of published methodologies creates a gap in the knowledge of applied programs that are effective and can be duplicated. This article seeks to outline an interagency relationship between police and healthcare that illustrates arrest is not the only option that law enforcement may utilize when encountering persons who use illicit substances. Program methods of a joint initiative between law enforcement and healthcare in a large, metropolitan area will be reviewed, supplemented with law enforcement overdose data and statistics on law enforcement treatment referrals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (7) ◽  
pp. 43-50
Author(s):  
Michael D. Komrowski, MS ◽  
Nitin K. Sekhri, MD

Opioid abuse represents a public health crisis that has significant associated morbidity and mortality. Since beginning in the early 1990’s, the opioid abuse epidemic has been difficult to control due to regulatory, economic, and psychosocial factors that have perpetuated its existence. This era of opioid abuse has been punctuated by three distinct rises in mortality, precipitated by unique public health problems that needed to be addressed. Patients affected by opioid abuse have been historically treated with either methadone or naltrexone. While these agents have clinical utility supported by robust literature, we the authors posit that buprenorphine is a superior therapy for both opioid use disorder (OUD) as well as pain. This primacy is due to the pharmacological properties of buprenorphine which render it unique among other opioid medications. One such property is buprenorphine’s ceiling effect of respiratory depression, a common side effect and complicating factor in the administration of many classical opioid medications. This profile renders buprenorphine safer, while simultaneously retaining therapeutic utility in the medical practitioner’s pharmacopeia for the treatment of opioid use disorder and pain.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 239920261984763
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Fudin ◽  
Amelia L Persico ◽  
Jeffrey J Bettinger ◽  
Erica L Wegrzyn

Over the past decade, opioid use has been at the forefront of a public health crisis throughout the United States. In response to the tremendous negative societal, personal, and economic impacts that the growing opioid crisis has caused, several governmental agencies began to respond. These efforts include declaration of a nationwide public health emergency, increased public health surveillance of the epidemic, research support for pain and addiction, and increased access to overdose-reversing drugs such as naloxone. Naloxone access, in particular, has become a priority. In the United States, pharmacists have had the opportunity to play a crucial role in promoting access to naloxone. Since initial approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1971 as an antidote to opioid agonist overdose, naloxone access has evolved significantly. Today many states have authorized standing orders for naloxone, allowing it to be dispensed by pharmacists without a patient-specific prescription, and all 50 states and the District of Columbia allow medical providers to prescribe take-home naloxone to at-risk patients. While the opioid epidemic itself remains a contentious topic of political, ethical, and medical debate, it is widely acknowledged that mitigation strategies that could lessen morbidity and mortality are essential. Improved access to naloxone is one such strategy which remains at the forefront during this public health crisis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-S) ◽  
pp. 81-89
Author(s):  
Pinkan Sadhukhan ◽  
Innocent Sutnga ◽  
Bharjil Bingari ◽  
Ananta Choudhury

Coronaviridae is a typical type of viral family comprised of an exceptionally huge RNA genome with a characteristic appearance and a noteworthy propensity to move from creatures to people. Since the start of the 21st century, three exceptionally contagious and pathogenic coronaviruses have traversed the species boundary and caused lethal pneumonia, exacting serious episodes, and causing human wellbeing crises to an unfathomable extent. The COVID-19 pandemic, presumably, is the most wrecking one, over the most recent 100 years after Spanish influenza. To the quick assessment of the various methodologies for a capability to evoke defensive resistance and well-being to shorten undesirable resistant potentiation, which assumes a significant function in this virus's pathogenesis. Considering the forthcoming public health crisis, researchers around the globe are consolidating their logical scientific possessions and offering initial information in an unprecedented way. In this review, we have tried to summarize some of the SAR-nCoV2 treatments that essentially focus on the potential drugs including Lopinavir/Ritonavir, Favipiravir, Remdesivir, Chloroquine phosphate, Hydroxychloroquine, Arbidol, and so on. Other potential vaccine developments with their difficulties associated and their current status are also being addressed. Keywords: 


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. e000359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D Winfield ◽  
Marie Crandall ◽  
Brian H Williams ◽  
Joseph Victor Sakran ◽  
Kathy Shorr ◽  
...  

Kansas City is a microcosm for USA. Although Kansas City shows a relatively diverse population, it is one that is segregated along the lines of race and income. This is an inequity that is common to all cities across the country. With this inequity comes unequal opportunity to survive and to thrive. Firearm violence is a core component of this societal inequity. In this article, we present the proceedings of the 2019 Kansas City Firearm Violence Symposium, where distinguished experts in trauma convened to share their experience, evidence and voices of gun violence—directly and indirectly. There were discussions on topics such as the human toll of gun violence, the role of structural violence in its perpetuation, the intersectional nature of race with both violence and medical care, and guidance on measures that could be taken to advocate for the reduction and elimination of gun violence. This was a symposium that started a country-wide conversation between academia, healthcare, survivors and the community on the most pressing public health crisis facing USA today.


2021 ◽  
pp. 105756772110504
Author(s):  
Richard C. Helfers ◽  
Johnny Nhan

In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe prompting stay-at-home orders for all but the most essential workers in society. Policing was one of the professions that is essential for community safety, regardless of the circumstances. Officers were on the front-line of the COVID-19 public health crisis and their preparedness was crucial for officer and community health. During the onset of the pandemic little was known about how officers perceived the virus and how police agencies prepared officers to work in a highly contagious environment. This study used semistructured interviews of police officers in two states in the United States that had elevated cases of the virus. The authors explored the lived experiences of police officers to explore officers’ perceptions, concerns, implications the pandemic had on patrol activity, and agency preparedness during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results revealed structural and cultural forces that resulted in officers and their agency leadership not taking the pandemic seriously, ill-preparation and ill-equipping, and disincentives in reporting exposure. Moreover, officers’ fears were largely not based on their own well-being, but on the risk of spreading the disease to their family members.


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