I would like to inform viewers of a medical problem called opioid addiction. In this created media piece I role play as a public health official to identify the problem and potential solutions. I even link a bi-monthly entry to informatics tools that could enhance my ability to mitigate and deal with this epidemic. I discuss the tools needed in a role-play fashion.
130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. There is no other medication that within a week can condemn someone to a life of addiction. Doctors have been promoting this opioid medications on the basis of fraudulent science. There is no other medication that kills so many people as opioids. At this rate at the end of 2019 the numbers extrapolated from opioid deaths from the morgue where 60 – 70 % of death cases are from overdoses of heroin and fentanyl. Covering 1/5th of any Midwest states a morgues estimates that there will be 4,000 overdoes this year and 10,000 + for a whole state. State officials are urged to declare a health emergency.
SAMHSA developed Findtreatment.gov over the last few months, could benefit more of a broad audience by relying in part on input from at-risk individuals who would actually use the online portal. Perhaps this could increase the simplicity of the website for those affected by addiction.
Photo : An example of GIS
GIS, part of the final chosen tools to solve the problem.
Esri’s opioid story map, called The Opioid Epidemic, is a data-rich presentation that includes graphs, interactive maps and commentary that take the user on a tour of the crisis through the lens of several data sets like drug poisoning deaths, prescription-per-provider data, and statistics cross-referenced with the voting records of public officials who either did or did not support the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) — a widely supported 2016 law representing the first major federal addiction legislation in 40 years.