Commentary: Rx for Understanding: Free Online Tool to Teach Students

By Nora L. Howley | January 29, 2013 | Leave a comment | Filed in Prescription Drugs, Young Adults & Youth

Medicine—whether over-the-counter or prescription—is an important part of a modern health care system. Who would want a world without penicillin or acetaminophen? But medicine is only effective when it is used properly, and for young people moving to adulthood, learning how to use medicine properly is a critical life skill.

Research shows that one in four teenagers report that they have taken a prescription drug not prescribed to them by a doctor at least once in their lives. Middle school is often when students start to make the wrong choice.

Recognizing the scope of the problem, the NEA Health Information Network (NEA HIN) set out to determine what we could do to help teachers and families help students. After looking at what was available, NEA HIN created Rx for Understanding which includes 10 cross-curricular lessons for middle school students. Aligned with the National Health Education Standards and Common Core State Standards, the lessons aim to equip students with the understanding and decision-making skills they need to recognize and avoid the dangers of misusing and abusing prescription drugs.

By focusing on the three basic concepts of proper use, misuse and abuse, the lessons help to build knowledge and skills that young people need. These involve not only learning the facts about drugs, but include activities that build skills such as information gathering, advocacy for good health choices and making responsible health decisions.

Rx for Understanding was developed and pilot-tested with input from educators around the country. Users report that the lessons are “easy-to-use” and “accessible.” Because lessons are aligned to various content areas, they can be included in various parts of the middle school curriculum.

Nora L. Howley

Manager of Programs

NEA Health Information Network

Heroin Use Increasing in Minneapolis/St. Paul, While Opiate Painkiller Use Declines

By Join Together Staff | January 29, 2013 | Leave a comment | Filed in Community Related & Drugs

Heroin use is growing in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, while abuse of opiate painkillers, such as methadone and oxycodone, may be decreasing, according to a new report.

Treatment centers in the area reported a small decrease in the number of people admitted for opiate abuse in the first half of 2012, according to Minnesota Public Radio.

“Heroin and other opiates are second only to the number of people coming into treatment for alcohol,” said Carol Falkowski, who wrote the new report. “That is a relatively new phenomena in the Twin Cities and something that we should all be concerned about.”

The report follows national trends in heroin and opiate painkiller use, the article notes. A study published last summer in the New England Journal of Medicine found that as OxyContin abuse has decreased now that the painkiller has been reformulated to make it more difficult to misuse, many people have switched to heroin.

Dr. Gavin Bart, who directs the Division of Addiction Medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center, said Minneapolis/St. Paul is seeing an influx of the cheapest, purest heroin in the United States. “What is probably happening is there’s a marketing battle between the dealers and the people who peddle prescription opiates and the heroin traffickers,” he said. “In order to get good customers you increase the quality and decrease the price, which is what’s happened with heroin and it’s just pulling market share from the prescription opiate addicts.”

Opiate painkillers are becoming more difficult to obtain, because the state’s prescription monitoring program allows doctors to see if other physicians have written opiate prescriptions for the same patient, Bart noted. While doctors in the state are not required to use the database, more health systems are incorporating it, he added.

HELP RECOVERY CONNECTIONS REACH THE CHURCHES

Good Morning Recovery friends and Brother and sisters in CHRIST

            Recovery Connections was birthed a year ago with one purpose in mind and that is to set the captives free in other words help those struggling with addiction find there way and empower them to maintain sanity and sobriety. A year or two ago the Council of Drug Alcohol of Pennsylvania put together a training designed just for Clergy and the response was overwhelming. Most families and individuals who struggle with addiction go to local churches for help and most churches have no idea on how they can help or where they can send these folks to get help .I have done some research and there are an estimated fourteen thousand churches in Pennsylvania. That is a lot of churches and it is my personal mission to equip and educate these churches and this is where I will need your help. I cannot afford fourteen thousand stamps fourteen thousand envelopes fourteen thousand sheets of paper and a couple dozen ink cartridges. I have been in contact with two great organizations who have sent me brochures with the info the churches are going to need. I could do one letter and make copies but I feel it needs to be more personal so I did more research and I have pastors names and addresses. My intro letter with the information will be made personal and hard to disregard or ignore.We have added a Donate button on the blog and we will send a receipt for your tax purposes. A church is only as good as the the tools it has in the LORDS tool box. PLEASE GIVE TO HELP SPREAD THE MESSAGE OF RECOVERY AND HOPE.  

Address joseph-recoveryconnections.blogspot.com

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Communities Start to Organize Against Heroin

By Join Together Staff | January 28, 2013 | 1 Comment | Filed in Community Related & Drugs

Communities across the country are beginning to organize town hall meetings, support groups and campaigns to discourage the growing use of heroin, The Christian Science Monitor reports.

Heroin, once mainly seen in poor urban areas, is now increasingly used by young people in wealthy suburbs, small cities and rural towns, according to the newspaper. “You would have to go pretty remote to find a place that didn’t have this,” Kathleen Kane-Willis of Roosevelt University in Chicago, who has tracked heroin use since 2004, told the newspaper. “It’s just everywhere.”

A study published last summer in the New England Journal of Medicine found that as OxyContin abuse has decreased now that the painkiller has been reformulated to make it more difficult to misuse, many people have switched to heroin.

Parents say they are having a difficult time finding treatment for their children’s heroin addiction. They are forming support groups to help one another. Some are turning to the Internet to find support from other parents.

Advocacy groups are trying to address heroin overdoses by pushing for state laws that give people limited immunity on drug possession charges if they seek medical help for someone suffering from an overdose. Most of these Good Samaritan laws protect people from prosecution if they have small quantities of drugs and seek medical aid after an overdose. These laws are designed to limit immunity to drug possession, so that large supplies of narcotics would remain illegal. Advocates are also supporting rules that allow doctors to prescribe the overdose antidote naloxone to families of people addicted to opioids.

Many Parents Not Concerned About Children’s Misuse of Narcotic Pain Medicines

By Join Together Staff | January 28, 2013 | Leave a comment | Filed in Parenting, Prescription Drugs & Youth

A survey of parents finds just one-third are very concerned about the misuse of prescribed narcotic pain medicine by children and teens in their community, according to HealthDay. Only one-fifth are very concerned about the misuse of these drugs in their own families.

The national survey of more than 1,300 parents with children ages 15 to 17 was conducted by the University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital. According to the findings, 38 percent of black parents, 26 percent of Hispanic parents, and 13 percent of white parents are very concerned about the misuse of narcotic painkillers in their own families. Misuse of these medicines has been shown to be three times higher among white teens than black or Hispanic teens, according to the researchers.

They found 41 percent of parents favor a policy that would require a doctor’s visit to obtain refills on these medications. About half said they do not support a requirement that unused pain medicines be returned to a doctor or pharmacy.

According to the survey, 66 percent of respondents strongly support requiring parents to show identification when they pick up narcotic painkillers for their children, and 57 percent strongly support policies that would ban obtaining prescriptions for the medicines from more than one doctor.

“Recent estimates are that one in four high school seniors have ever used a narcotic pain medicine. However, parents may downplay the risks of narcotic pain medicine because they are prescribed by a doctor,” Sarah Clark, Associate Director of the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Michigan, said in a news release. “However, people who misuse narcotic pain medicine are often using drugs prescribed to themselves, a friend or a relative. That ‘safe’ prescription may serve as a readily accessible supply of potentially lethal drugs for children or teens.”