The Opioid Crisis
The Beginning
By aggressively marketing new opioid medications and assuring prescribers that they wouldn't be as easily abused as other painkillers, pharmaceutical companies misled doctors and hospitals and allowed the number of opioid addictions to soar. As opioid manufacturers continue to be faced with lawsuits, it's clear who citizens and governmental bodies blame.The Opioid Crisis continued to worsen until 2012, when prescription rates started a consistent decline to their lowest levels since the start of the Crisis. (It's important to note that the CDC maps only cover prescribed opioids, not illicitly made fentanyl and heroin. In the beginning of the Opioid Crisis, overdoses were most commonly a result of prescribed medications. Unfortunately, for many addicts, their prescriptions were a gateway to abusing illicit drugs.)
Comparing 2012 to 2020
The nation's rural areas, especially in the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, as well as in southern Oregon and the Desert Southwest, were hardest hit by the Opioid Crisis in 2012, which was defined as the peak by the CDC. It may not be a coincidence that, in these rural areas, privatized for-profit hospitals dominate the landscape, despite being outnumbered by nonprofits three-to-one nationally. One way to better address this crisis would be for donors and the federal government to fund the construction of nonprofit hospitals in rural areas.Since the peak of the Crisis, only isolated pockets of the nation haven't seen a reduction in the prescription of opioids. In 2020, only 3.6% of counties distributed enough opioids for each resident to have one. The national average prescription rate nearly halved from 81.3 to 43.3 prescriptions per hundred people.
The Current Situation
With over half of addictions between April 2020 and April 2021 being accounted for by fentanyl, there is still plenty of work for nonprofit hospitals and other organizations to do. Methamphetamine and cocaine abuse have also dramatically risen, and many addicts, no matter which drug they are addicted to, don't ask for help because they feel a stigma against doing so. Unfortunately, this fear of judgement exists because most Americans still view drug abuse as a personal choice.What Nonprofits Are Doing
Interact For Health, a Cincinnati-area nonprofit, addresses opioid addictions by sending a quick response team of police, fire/EMS, and peer mentors (addiction survivors). These response teams visit the homes of people who recently overdosed. They offer support and encourage the overdose victim to continue treatment after naloxone has been administered. The teams are particularly effective because they include peer mentors, who are living proof that recovery is possible.Shatterproof is a very good example of what a nonprofit organization should be doing to address the ongoing Opioid Crisis. Their six-fold process involves
- Identifying who has the greatest ability to shape substance abuse policy, namely governments, the media, and employers
- Implementing evidence-based best practices and removing harmful policies that act as barriers to addicts' recovery
- Building a national coalition of institutions that work to reduce the stigma that addicts face
- Creating an addiction stigma index to annually assess public attitude about addiction
- Publicly designating institutions that follow best practices and help to establish new innovations as "Allies"
- Using national and local news media to promote the movement, comment on its progress, and involve other organizations
.png){kind=link}
