The number of people dying from opioid overdoses has reached epidemic proportions. City and state officials say it’s a national problem.

Baltimore city declaring the opioid problem a public health emergency.

“There are more people dying from overdose here in Baltimore City than they Are dying from homicide,” says Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore City Health Commissioner.

Health experts tell WJZ part of the problem is that these drugs are easy to get and deadlier than most people think.

A silent killer, growing deadlier by the day. Opioids, meant to relieve pain, cause a spike in overdoses and deaths. Fentanyl, one of the most potent drugs, is 100 times stronger than heroin.

Read the entire story.

Jonathan Gross and Darcy Phelan-Emrick, Baltimore City Health Department employees, wrote the article published by Esri. 

A web map gallery on ArcGIS Online showcases the work of your organization. The authors provide best practices for creating and launching your own web map gallery so you can share your work throughout your organization and raise the profile of your GIS program. They also include tips that will help you make the most effective use of mapping products in your organization. 

Read the entire article.

Mirroring the nationwide epidemic, the number of opioid addiction and abuse victims in Baltimore continues to rise, and overdose cases crowd the city’s emergency rooms.  Last week, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan appointed a Heroin and Opioid Emergency Task Force, and proposed new legislation for the General Assembly that would put strict limits on opioid prescriptions and impose tough new penalties for traffickers.  On this month's edition of  Healthwatch, Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen joins Tom Hall  to discuss the city’s continuing response to the opioid epidemic.

Listen to the entire audio. 

Wen, Baltimore's 33-year-old health commissioner, has always been a few steps—a few years, really—ahead of the curve. The daughter of Chinese dissidents, Wen grew up in inner-city Los Angeles, where she saw classmates and neighbors suffer from gun violence and drug addiction. At 18, she graduated summa cum laude from California State University. Then came medical school and residency, a Rhodes Scholarship, and work as a professor and emergency room physician at the George Washington University hospital. All the while, Wen made a name for herself as a patient advocate, giving several TED talks and penning a book, When Doctors Don't Listen.

Her boundless energy is needed in Baltimore. The city of 600,000 has one of the highest overdose rates of any city, with 393 fatal overdoses in 2015. During her tenure, Wen has re-vamped the way the city responds to clusters of overdose calls and made it easier for drug users and their families and friends to access naloxone, the overdose reversal drug. On the city's overdose prevention campaign, DontDie.org, she demonstrates how to use it. Last spring, she testified before Congress and spoke on a panel with President Obama about the city's approach to addressing the crisis.

Despite the whirlwind job—Wen works "all the hours," as her assistant told The Atlantic's Olga Khazan—the commissioner takes the long view when it comes to the drug epidemic making the headlines. Substance abuse and addiction aren't new to Baltimore, she argues, and are at the root of seemingly unrelated problems that the city has faced for years. Shortly after the death of Freddie Gray, she wrote a pointed Washington Post op-ed about how the beleaguered city's high arrest and incarceration rates and seemingly intractable poverty draw back to the need for substance abuse and mental health treatment. "Other reforms will not be successful unless these core issues are resolved," she wrote.

Read the entire story.