Drug Safety | The Pump Handle

Drug Safety A Q&A with public health leaders on the opioid epidemic: ‘Prescription opioid abuse is still raging out of control’

October 24, 2014 Kim Krisberg 3Comment

While pharmaceutical companies are making billions in painkiller profits, it’s the public sector that ends up bearing the burden and cost of the fallout that accompanies skyrocketing sales of highly addictive prescription opioids. After the jump is a Pump Handle Q&A with two public health officials at the forefront of the opioid abuse epidemic within America’s big cities.

Drug Safety Shift work: Marketing medication for symptoms instead of addressing the hazard

September 22, 2014 Elizabeth Grossman 4Comment

That people who work nights have their sleep cycles thrown out of balance has serious consequences but urging a potentially habit-forming, psychoactive drug on an economically stressed, overworked workforce, would seem to be a symptom, at the minimum, of a pharmaceutical industry gone awry. Shouldn’t we instead be figuring out how to reduce the occupational health risks of work schedules?

Drug Safety San Jose Mercury News investigates the drugging of California foster children

August 28, 2014 Liz Borkowski, MPH 1Comment

The San Jose Mercury News has begun publishing a multi-part series on the alarming use of psychotropic medications among youth in California’s foster-care system. Among the findings: 60% of foster children have been prescribed an antipsychotic, and 12% of those who received a psychotropic drug were prescribed two to four psychotropic medications at a time.

Drug Safety “Alcohol was the weapon of choice for these men”: Peer groups may be key to stopping campus rape

August 18, 2014 Liz Borkowski, MPH 1Comment

Some men think it’s okay to rape if they do it by getting their victims too drunk to offer much resistance. Can their peers change such behavior by speaking up?

Drug Safety Researchers develop innovative way to detect fake malaria drugs that could save lives, deter counterfeiting

July 22, 2014 Kim Krisberg

It looks like a simple piece of paper and it’s nearly as cheap, ideally costing just pennies. But despite its small size, it’s poised to make an enormous impact and potentially save thousands of lives.

Drug Safety Another study finds that despite rare adverse events, childhood vaccines are safe

July 8, 2014 Kim Krisberg

Vaccine safety is one of those topics that has become so tragically mired in misinformation and myth that there can never be enough supporting evidence. So, here’s some more.

Drug Safety Report: Some progress on the prescription drug abuse front, but much more is needed

October 11, 2013 Kim Krisberg

Strategies to reduce the deathly toll of prescription drug abuse are reaping positive outcomes, though not every state is taking full advantage, according to a new report from Trust for America’s Health.

Drug Safety Other Supreme Court decisions with public-health implications

July 3, 2013 Liz Borkowski, MPH

The Supreme Court’s decisions on marriage equality and the Voting Rights Act got a lot of media attention last week, but several of the Court’s other decisions also have implications for public health — and they came down on the side of employers, real-estate developers, and drug manufacturers.

Drug Safety Can chronic pain treatment benefit from a public health perspective?

December 5, 2012 The Pump Handle 16Comment

“If you really look at how pain affects people and what it means to have pain…you start to view it more as a social phenomenon.” These are words from Dr. Daniel Carr, who says the time for a population-based approach doesn’t begin with misuse and abuse of prescription painkillers; it begins, in fact, with how we interpret the contributors to pain in the first place.

Drug Safety Public health takes on the opioid abuse and overdose problem, building on strengths as conveners, educators

November 30, 2012 The Pump Handle 2Comment

A decade ago, only about 10 percent of the patients at Cincinnati’s Center for Chemical Addictions Treatment were admitted for opioid addiction and abuse. During the treatment center’s last fiscal year, that number was up to 64 percent. The numbers reflect a startling trend in Ohio and throughout the nation — a trend that public health workers are taking to task.