Public Health

United States Surgeon General Jerome Adams, MD, issued a national public health advisory April 6, urging opioid users — and their family and friends — to carry and learn how to administer the overdose-reversal drug naloxone.

Spending on opioid addiction and overdose treatment among people with coverage from large employers increased from $273 million in 2004 to $2.6 billion 2016, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.

As lawmakers moved to eliminate the ACA's individual mandate penalty beginning in 2019, approximately half the American public believes ACA marketplaces are "collapsing," including six in ten of those with coverage purchased through these marketplaces, according to a Kaiser Family…

Americans are increasingly misusing the nonopioid, nonaddictive painkiller gabapentin in conjunction with opioids and alcohol in areas of the U.S. already racked by the opioid crisis, according to a report from NBC News.

McKesson Corp. on March 29 committed $100 million to form a nonprofit foundation dedicated to addressing the nation's ongoing opioid epidemic.

A team of Missouri healthcare groups launched a population health database to help local hospitals identify underlying community health issues.

Texas A&M University Health Science Center in Bryan established a multidisciplinary opioid task force that aims to "reduce the burdens of opioid addiction, misuse and overdose on individuals, families, communities and the health care system," according to the organization.

Dublin, Ireland-based drugmaker Adapt Pharma on March 19 expanded its program to deliver free supplies of the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan to high schools and universities nationwide.

Medicaid provides essential funding and health coverage for addiction services in the large swaths of America wracked by the opioid overdose crisis that resulted in more than 42,000 deaths nationwide in 2016, according to a report conducted by Manatt Health.

President Donald Trump will introduce his administration's plan to address the nation's opioid overdose epidemic March 19 in New Hampshire, according to CNN.