MIKE24

Policy memo

For: The Federal Department of Health and Human Services

Subject: Prescription Drug Abuse and Heroin Use

Following the high rising cases relating to prescription of drug abuse and Heroin use, this policy memo serves to address the issues to reduce prescription pain medication that results in heroin overdose deaths and to promote the appropriate and effective prescription of the pain medications. Moreover, it also helps to provide mechanisms to improve access to treatment. Likewise, this policy memo also calls for various agencies under the Federal Department of Health and Human services to strengthen their efforts in addressing this issue. This memo, announces multiple preventions, enforcement policies and treatment strategies to address the matter. Therefore, at this moment I direct the following:

It is evident that epidemic arising from prescription pain medication and heroin deaths is currently devastating most families and communities across the country. Prescription drugs ranging from opioid pain medications is currently implicated in the study as increasingly causing drug overdose deaths in the last decades. The Center for Disease Control and prevention shows that deaths associated with prescription opioids quadrupled between the years 2000-2013(). In the studs, more than 16, 000 deaths were witnessed during that period. Currently, study shows that overdose deaths involving heroin are increasingly high and nearly doubling since 2016. As a result, CDC has found that addiction to various prescription pain medication as the most significant risk factor for heroin addiction (Compton & Volkow, 2016).

The most significant method to address this issue is through ensuring that medical professionals receive sufficient training on appropriate pain medication mostly in various prescribing practices. Adequate training ensures that professionals remain aware of the risks associated with these medications. Moreover, the federal government must invest more on healthcare professional training. Though various reforms are currently underway to achieve this goal across different executive departments and agencies, there is a need for more efforts to be accelerated following the urgency and impacts of the issue. Moreover, another additional priority in addressing this issue is playing a significant role to improve access to medication-assisted treatment. This implies the use of food and Drug Administration approved medications ranging from methadone, and buprenorphine medication products. It also includes the use of counseling methods among other behavioral therapies that also includes patient monitoring. This technique provides alternative treatments for opioid use disorders (Manchikanti, 2012). Likewise, it is evident that federal administered Health benefits programs help to increase access to these services. Training of health professionals serves to provide best practices for appropriate and effective prescribing of these pain medications. Training involves learning on various principles of pain management, identification of potential substance use disorders, proper methods for disposing of controlled substances among others. The most applicable training approaches include the use of modern educational methods to provide intensive coaching. It also involves the use of case-based courses that are within guidelines on pain medication as provided by the CDC (Compton & Baldwin, 2016).

To ensure effective implementation of the above policies, U.S federal Secretary of Health and Human Services should make clinical implementations to ensure effective use of these policies. Likewise, experts from agencies within the department of health and human services ranging from the National Institute of Health, the CDC, Substance abuse, and mental health should consult with other agencies to identify current practices to solve this problem. Moreover, in less than 90 days, agencies described above should submit an action plan to the federal secretary of Health and Human Services to show their progress in addressing the issues raised in this memo.

References

Compton, W. M., & Volkow, N. D. (2016). Abuse of prescription drugs and the risk of addiction. Drug and alcohol dependence, 83, S4-S7.

Compton, W. M., Jones, C. M., & Baldwin, G. T. (2016). Relationship between nonmedical prescription- opioid use and heroin use. N Engl J Med, 2016(374), 154-163.

Manchikanti, L. (2012). Prescription drug abuse: what is being done to address this new drug epidemic? Testimony before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources. Pain physician, 9(4), and 287.