Can technology solve public health problems? City leaders think so.

At the behest of the Baltimore city health department, teams of entrepreneurs have come up with seven ways that the city could use technology to address challenges in improving public health.

The teams are comprised of students, engineers, software developers and designers that collaborated with local tech incubators to develop apps, websites or other means to tackle specific problems. They include stemming opioid overdoses, preventing infant deaths, providing resources to ex-offenders, tracking asthma or providing some other solution that the city officials would have difficulty producing on their own.

The teams have been working for the past three months and plan to present their projects to the city, and business and tech communities Thursday evening, and could end up with small city grants of $5,000 to $25,000 or other aid to complete their projects and get them up and running. The city would retain a license to use the technology but would have no ownership stake.

All the new products are expected to be used in Baltimore in some way, and some could be developed into commercial products sold to other public health departments or entities, said Mike Fried, chief information officer for the city health department.

Read entire story.

Prescribed narcotic painkillers continue to fuel a nationwide opioid epidemic—nearly half of fatal overdoses in the United States involve opioids prescribed by a doctor.

But people don't seem to be avoiding the medications, despite the well-documented risks. In the latest NPR-Truven Health Analytics poll, over half of people surveyed, or 57 percent, said they had been prescribed a narcotic painkiller like Percocet, Vicodin or morphine at some point. That's an increase of 3 percent since we last asked the question in 2014 (54 percent), and of 7 percent since our 2011 poll (50 percent).

For almost three quarters of poll participants (74 percent), the prescription was for temporary acute pain, like from a broken arm or a dental procedure. Nineteen percent said they received the drugs for chronic pain.

Read the entire story.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: the nation’s opioid crisis.

Overdose deaths are on the rise across the country, in 2015, surpassing gun homicides for the first time. One of the hardest-hit states is Maryland, where the governor today declared a state of emergency to fight the epidemic.

But, for more than a year, the city of Baltimore has been training everyday citizens in how to use a lifesaving antidote, an approach that’s catching on across the country.

NewsHour producer Pamela Kirkland visited Baltimore to find out more.

MAN: Excuse me, sir, are you interested in Narcan training?

PAMELA KIRKLAND: Each week, city health workers hit the streets of Baltimore, handing out an emergency medication that brings users back from the dead.

JOHN HARRIS, Baltimore Health Department: This is the medicine. It reverses overdoses.

PAMELA KIRKLAND: Naloxone, brand name Narcan, comes as a nasal spray or injection, and works by blocking the brain’s opioid receptors.

In a city with 24,000 active heroin users, overdoses, and now increasingly this emergency antidote have become facts of life.

KYRON BANTON, Baltimore Resident: I lost a friend of mine that was — at 25 years old.

KENNETH SADIQ LEIGHTON, Baltimore Resident: I have just seen so many young people getting hooked on the opioids, or better yet, the fentanyl. And it’s definitely a killer.

PAMELA KIRKLAND: In Maryland, deaths from opioids, which include heroin, fentanyl and prescription painkillers, doubled between 2010 and 2015, to just under 1,100 people a year. Meanwhile, heroin fatalities alone more than tripled.

And in just the past three years, deaths in Baltimore from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid far stronger than heroin, are up 20-fold.

DR. LEANA WEN, Baltimore Health Commissioner: We have an epidemic of people, fellow residents in our city, who are dying from opioid overdose.

Read the transcript or watch the entire video.

With a black plastic bag in hand, Gerald Young ducked into the needle exchange van parked across the street from Baltimore’s Saint Paul Freewill Baptist Church. A cold January rain drizzled outside.

Young shuffled to a small table and sat down, untying and overturning his half-knotted bag. Three bundles of used needles tumbled into a red medical waste bin.

Across from Young, John Harris opened a new box of clean hypodermic needles and restored Young’s supply. Harris, a Baltimore public health worker, also gave him a new kit of naloxone, an opioid antidote that stops a potentially fatal overdose in moments. Young, a 61-year-old homeless Baltimore native, rose to leave the van and wander around his hometown.

Read entire story.