Data from emergency departments (EDs) show that the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic continues to worsen, according to the latest Vital Signs report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
One state’s successful strategies for reducing the number of injured workers at risk for opioid addiction will be shared with workers compensation experts from around the country at the upcoming Workers Compensation Research Institute’s (WCRI) conference in Boston. In 2011, the OBWC found that more than 8,000 injured workers were opioid-dependent for taking the equivalent of at least 60 mg a day of morphine for 60 or more days. By the end of 2017, that number was reduced to 3,315, which meant 4,714 fewer injured workers were at risk for opioid addiction, overdose, and death than in 2011.
National Safety Council digitizes nearly 100 years of injury and fatality data to help Americans understand their greatest safety challenges
March 1, 2018
While many Americans fear flying, violence and natural disasters, the odds of dying from preventable, everyday incidents are far greater – the greatest ever, in fact, in United States history. A person’s lifetime odds of dying from any unintentional cause have risen to one in 25 – up from odds of one in 30 in 2004, according to National Safety Council analysis.
Forcing OSHA to choose between focusing on enforcement or compliance assistance is “a false choice,” according to Dr. David Michaels, former assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health and current professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University in Washington.
The CDC is warning people to avoid taking the popular yet controversial herb kratom.
Already in the FDA’s crosshairs for its opioid properties, kratom has now been identified as the culprit behind a salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than two dozen people in 20 states. Eleven of those were affected to an extent that required hospitalization.
A popular herbal remedy for – among other things – opioid abuse has opioid properties that can lead to abuse, addiction and even death, says the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
A scientific analysis of the botanical substance kratom identified opioid properties in its compounds. In other words, kratom compounds may affect the body just like opioids.
President Trump’s pick to head up the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is getting a nod of approval from the nation’s oldest public health organization – despite his ties to an industry implicated in the current opioid crisis.
Opioid prescribing has increased 471 percent from 1996 to 2012, according to a new Annals of Emergency Medicine study, “Emergency Department Contribution to the Prescription Opioid Epidemic.” But, emergency departments are not a major source of opioid prescriptions. In fact, their share of opioid prescribing is small and declining.
While opioid overdose rates remain high among adults, American teens are misusing opioid pain medications less than they did a decade ago. That’s the good news from the 2017 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey of eighth, 10th and 12th graders in schools nationwide. The bad news? More kids are “vaping” – and they’re not really sure what’s in that mist that they’re inhaling.
President Trump’s declaring the opioid epidemic a national health emergency is a critical first step, but it does not address the urgent need for more federal funds to fight this crisis, according to Arthur C. Evans, Jr., PhD, CEO of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Evans said the declaration does not automatically direct federal funds to address the problem – funds which should go to the states, because they “are battling this epidemic on the front lines.”