News Coverage

DR. LEANA WEN: REMOVE RED TAPE TO SAVE LIVES (Center Maryland Op-ed)

Mar 6th, 2017

The opioid epidemic continues to ravage Maryland, killing more residents every year than traffic accidents. We are in the midst of a public health emergency.

Across the state, nearly 1500 people lost their lives to drug or alcohol overdose in the first nine months of 2016. The powerful opioid known as fentanyl is driving these high rates; in Baltimore City, fatal overdoses involving the drug have increased 20 times in the least three years.

These deaths are especially tragic because there is one medication — naloxone — that is a complete antidote to an opioid overdose. As an emergency physician, I have used the medication hundreds of times and have seen firsthand that it can bring someone on the verge of death back to life in seconds. Naloxone is safe, with virtually no side effects if given to someone who is not on opioids. It is easy to administer, with two versions, one that’s a nasal spray and one that’s given like an Epi-Pen.

Naloxone gives everyone the power to save a life. And in Baltimore, it has.

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TECHealth is how city government and technologists should work together (Technical.ly Baltimore)

Mar 3rd, 2017

The Baltimore City Health Department backed seven tech projects to help the city. Take note, city agencies.

With a food computer glowing toward the front of the room at the University of Maryland BioPark, a mix of officials and technologists described the projects in the Baltimore health department’s TECHealth program on Thursday night.

They involve work on some of the city’s toughest challenges, like heroin overdoses. In Code in the Schools’ Bad Batch Alert, students are helping to build a warning system for heroin that is laced with fentanyl.

The technology itself is also pretty involved. Chris Meenan of the University of Maryland’s I3 Center for Healthcare Innovation is working on a database that can help review suspicious deaths of children. Delali Dzirasa and Fearless are working on a dashboard to analyze health department data.

But in remarks, Meenan and Dzirasa pointed out that the collaboration started with something as basic as an email.

We’ve heard plenty about issues with getting city government to answer, but in this case they got responses — quick ones. They separately reached out to Baltimore Health Department CIO Mike Fried at various hours of the night, and promptly received an email back.

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Dr. Leana Wen: Remove Red Tape to Save Lives (Daily Record)

Mar 3rd, 2017

The opioid epidemic continues to ravage Maryland, killing more residents every year than traffic accidents. We are in the midst of a public health emergency.

City officials tap tech community to help solve public health problems (Baltimore Sun)

Mar 3rd, 2017

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.

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Dr. Leana Wen: Remove red tape to save lives (Daily Record)

Mar 3rd, 2017

The opioid epidemic continues to ravage Maryland, killing more residents every year than traffic accidents. We are in the midst of a public health emergency. Across the state, nearly 1500 people lost their lives to drug or alcohol overdose in the first nine months of 2016. The powerful opioid known as fentanyl is driving these high rates; in Baltimore ...

Read entire op-ed.

POLL: More People Are Taking Opioids, Even As Their Concerns Rise (NPR)

Mar 3rd, 2017

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.

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Baltimore turns to a life-saving opioid overdose antidote, but it’s no cure for the crisis (PBS Newshour)

Mar 2nd, 2017

PBS Newshour Baltimore Naloxone Opioid Overdose Outreach

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.

$50,000 grant to help postpartum women through B'more Fit (Baltimore Sun)

Mar 1st, 2017

The Family League of Baltimore has received a $50,000 grant from Aetna Foundation to expand a community-based fitness and nutrition program for postpartum women and their families.

The funding will allow the enrollment of 100 new people in the B'more Fit program and the ability to reach 10,000 others through health fairs and other community events.

Read the entire story.

In the war on heroin, Baltimore drug programs face an uncertain future (PBS)

Mar 1st, 2017

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.

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The price of saving a life (Baltimore Sun)

Feb 21st, 2017

As the grim toll of opioid overdose deaths has risen steadily in Maryland and across the country, public health officials increasingly have urged that the anti-overdose medication Narcan, also known as naloxone, be made more widely available to addicts and their caregivers. 　The antidote, taken in the form of either a nasal spray or an injection, can quickly revive overdose victims after they've stopped breathing, and Baltimore officials credit it with preventing more than 800 people in the city alone from succumbing to fatal overdoses in recent years.

But with the drug's life-saving successes has also come a cruel dilemma in the form of rapidly spiraling price hikes　for even the generic version of the drug. The price of a common injectible version is up 500 percent in the last two years, and the price of the nasal spray Baltimore's health department uses is up more than 60 percent. That has health officials worried that rising costs will deny the the opportunity to exploit the drug's full life-saving potential by training as many people as possible in its use and distributing it not only to first responders and health professionals but also　to ordinary citizens — friends and family of drug users — who might be in a position to rescue an overdose victim.

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