Students and staff members at Ohio University's College of Heath Sciences in Athens created a virtual reality program that helps train individuals on how to respond to an opioid overdose.

Americans living in rural areas are far more likely to receive an opioid prescription than individuals living in big cities, according to the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published Jan. 18.

Counties where physicians received more gifts and payments from opioid-makers demonstrated higher overdose death rates than areas with lighter drug marketing, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.

Jessie Gaeta, MD, internist and CMO of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, can find and revive patients who have overdosed using a reverse motion detector, according to The Boston Globe.

West Virginia has the highest rate of fatal opioid overdoses among U.S. states, with 49.6 per 100,000 individuals, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The ongoing government shutdown could hinder treatment for patients with opioid use disorder, since clinicians need approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration to prescribe medication-assisted treatments like buprenorphine, reports amNewYork.

Purdue Pharma's former president Richard Sackler, MD, knew his company's opioid painkiller OxyContin was being abused, but still pushed sales to physicians and tried to divert the blame to patients for becoming addicted, a revised court filing released Jan. 15 by the Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey claims.

Americans are more likely to die from a drug overdose than in a car crash for the first time in U.S. history, according to a new report from the National Safety Council.

The Texas Hospital Association is helping hospitals combat the opioid crisis by adapting existing technology to give providers better information when they need it, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Starbucks will install needle-disposal boxes in some high-traffic locations after numerous employees reported finding blood and discarded needles in store bathrooms, reports USA Today.

Hospital-based physicians have a unique opportunity to find programs and practices to prevent and treat opioid addiction in isolated pockets of the healthcare system, emergency medicine physician Rebecca Parker, MD, writes in The Hill.

UC San Diego Health has rolled out various initiatives to limit opioid prescriptions and boost access to addiction treatment across its system.

After a 2018 state law required about 80 Massachusetts hospitals and satellite emergency rooms to offer opioid-addicted patients medication, hospitals are receiving guidelines to help with prescribing practices, public radio station WBUR reports.

The total care for patients with opioid use disorder costs hospitals about $11 billion annually, according to an analysis conducted by Premier.

The American Heart Association is offering two online courses for health professionals and lay people on providing care and treatment for opioid overdose victims, reports the Macomb (Michigan) Daily.

Sudents at Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon have developed a wristband that sounds an alarm when its wearer is at risk of an opioid overdose, according to engineering magazine IEEE Spectrum.

U.S. children and adolescents are increasingly dying from opioid overdoses, according to a study published on JAMA Network.

A study published in Academic Emergency Medicine clinically assessed the practice of discharging patients from the emergency department just one hour after receiving naloxone for drug overdoses.

Taking long-term opioid users off their prescription painkillers may be harmful, international health experts write in a letter published in Oxford Academic Pain Medicine.

Chronic pain patients don't fare much better taking opioids to manage their pain than they do by  taking placebos, a study published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association found.