#Opioids

New Medicaid Policy Will Help States Better Fight the Opioid Crisis

The death rate spiked right after the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Areas with lower population density have not seen the same slowdown as urban areas.

Researchers found that longer usage of injection drugs was positively linked to hep C testing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has learned difficult lessons from such outbreaks over the past five years.

People with an opioid use disorder, in particular, had a tenfold higher risk of being diagnosed with COVID-19.

As overdose death rates have risen in this population, life expectancy has increasingly narrowed.

Infective endocarditis is a life-threatening bacterial infection of the heart valves that is associated with injection drug use.

This is one of many ways that people who use drugs can engage in harm reduction during the coronavirus pandemic.

A national survey found that primary care physicians had little interest in prescribing buprenorphine or naltrexone.

Even after federal regulators relaxed rules requiring daily clinic visits, these bad actors are still bringing patients in for monitoring.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended the usual systems governing the dispensation of medication-assisted treatment.

The CDC calls for everyone to be tested and for all pregnant women to be tested during every pregnancy.

Prescriptions in the household have long been cited as a source of individuals’ misuse of opioids.

However, the overdose death rate resulting from synthetic opioids, especially fentanyl, rose between 2017 and 2018.

Just under 1% of pregnant women in the state overall up to 2% in central and western New York have hep C antibodies.

One bill would create 1,000 new residency positions for physicians going into addiction treatment medicine.