Public Health

Gov. Eric Greitens, a former Democrat turned Republican, signed an executive order on Monday directing the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services to create prescription drug monitoring database to curb opioid overprescribing.

Investigators believe a 10-year-old Miami boy may have overdosed and died after inadvertently coming into contact with the extremely potent synthetic opioid fentanyl, according to the Miami Herald.

Lake Forest (Ill.) Hospital, part of Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine, reopened at 5 a.m. Tuesday after closing on the evening of July 12 due flooding and loss of power.

The CDC will distribute $12 million this week to 23 states and the District of Columbia to support local responses to the nation's opioid epidemic.

Multiple governors expressed concern regarding the intensifying pace of the opioid epidemic during a July 13 panel at the National Governors Association's summer meeting in Providence, R.I., according to The Providence Journal.

Big data is helping lawmakers and healthcare providers find solutions to the nation's opioid epidemic, freelance technology writer Jerry Bowles wrote in a diginomica op-ed.

Ohio's attorney general's office will administer $3 million in grant funding to develop or expand Drug Abuse Response Teams and Quick Response Teams in the state.

As the rate of opioid overdose deaths surges in Ohio, the Akron Board of Education approved a policy Monday to stock its schools with the opioid overdose antidote naloxone, according to Cleveland.com.

Boston Medical Center in March received $25 million, the largest private donation in its history, to launch the Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine. BMC promptly tapped Michael Botticelli, former director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy…

Most physicians see the opioid epidemic's adverse effects in their practices, according to a survey conducted by MDLinx.