Naloxone, available as a nasal spray called Narcan or in injectable form, resuscitates 100% of people who overdose if administered quickly.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Opioid overdoses killed 47,000 Americans in 2017 — more than gun violence. Many fewer would have died if they’d been treated with the life-saving drug naloxone, also called Narcan.
MIT President L. Rafael Reif acknowledged in a letter that the late Jeffrey Epstein gave funding to many researchers.
AP Photo/Stephan Savoia, File
Institutions that benefited from donations from benefactors such as Epstein are facing hard questions. In a somewhat similar ethical debate in 1905, a pastor argued for return of a Rockefeller gift.
Protests and lawsuits against opioid manufacturers are growing more common, but drug distributors are also facing scrutiny.
AP Photo/Charles Krupa
Previously secret documents and data make it clear that many companies engaged in the distribution of prescription painkillers either skirted or ignored their legal obligations for years.
Rapidly advancing technologies, including artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D-printing, smart-phones, smart-homes, precision medicine and diagnostics, promise to disrupt health care as we know it.
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In an era of rapid technological advance, devastating climate change, increasing inequality and a steadily aging society, health-care leadership development is vital.
When newborns stay with their opioid-dependent mothers in hospital, they experience improved mother-infant bonding, greater chances of breastfeeding, less severe symptoms, less medication and much shorter hospital stays.
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The evidence is clear that newborn babies do better when they ‘room-in’ with their opioid-dependent mothers. So why are hospitals across Canada so slow to provide this recognized standard of care?
A man walks in a back alley in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, February 2019. More people fatally overdosed in British Columbia last year compared with 2017 despite efforts to combat the province’s public health emergency.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
A policy response focused on reducing prescription opioids will not resolve North America’s opioid crisis. And it is hurting many adults who live with otherwise unbearable chronic pain.
Lawsuits against Purdue say its drug Oxycontin played a key role in the opioid epidemic.
Reuters/George Fre
OxyContin maker Purdue has reportedly been mulling a bankruptcy filling, just as the first of around 2,000 lawsuits against it prepares to go to trial.
What is each partner looking to get?
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The interests of pharmaceutical companies and public health are not the same. Industry dollars can distort research agendas, while framing health challenges and solutions in ways that benefit corporations.
The Chronic Pain Association of Canada has received money from Eli Lilly Canada Inc., Purdue Canada Inc. and Merck Frosst Canada. A blog post on the association’s website contains messages favourable to increased opioid use.
(Flickr/Ajay Suresh)
For many who know someone who has lost a loved one, it can be hard to know what to say or how to respond. For those who have lost a loved one, the silence can be deafening. Some things to keep in mind.
Cannabis seedlings are shown at the new Aurora Cannabis facility, November 24, 2017 in Montréal.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz)
Research shows that THC and CBD in cannabis have potential to interrupt the vicious cycle of opioid addiction, dependence, withdrawal and relapse.
Few medical schools offer training in addictions medicine and most doctors feel they lack the specialist expertise to deal with the inpatient opioid crisis.
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The toll of the opioid epidemic is often derived from toxicology reports. These rely on drug tests. A medical historian explains these tests and how they fall short of capturing why people are dying.
Many people may misunderstand the basics about opioids. That prevents researchers from understanding the full scope of the epidemic.
A few woefully underfunded academic health sciences centres are responsible for providing complex care to patients with life-threatening illnesses as well as training future doctors and testing the latest in new surgical techniques.
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Canada’s systems of health funding, medical training and physician compensation need an overhaul – to support vital centres of medical research and complex care.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams demonstrates the proper procedure for administering a nasal injection of naloxone on reporter Jennifer Lott, left, during a visit to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Miss., May 17, 2018.
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Cyrus Ahalt, University of California, San Francisco
One study argues that naloxone increases opioid use because it protects against death from overdose. But a closer analysis shows Narcan is the number one public health tool to fight the overdose epidemic.
The way opioids work on the brain makes finding non-opioid treatments for addiction very challenging.
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
Universities teach students and produce research – but do they have responsibility to engage with the communities that surround them? Two university presidents explain why their answer is an emphatic yes.