Just before President Obama announced a new set of new initiatives to boost access to addiction treatment this week, a four-part series on NPR looked at the opioid epidemic's smallest victims, and what can be done to improve their care.
I was a bit surprised by how readily this new physician I visited agreed to prescribe more pain medication for me. My previous experience before I was a cancer patient was that doctors were unwilling to prescribe highly addictive drugs — but they weren’t palliative care doctors, like him.
At the center of one of the great medical controversies of our time, the mishmash around pain medication and addiction to prescription drugs has caused alarm in law enforcement and the public. But the realities of patients who have chronic pain problems, chronic addiction problems, or both, are not
More governors to refuse Medicaid expansion under Obamacare; evidence that Medicaid improves health; problems with methadone and more from our Daily Briefing.
How many times do you see pain patients who aren’t addicted represented in stories about prescription painkillers? Maia Szalavitz weighs in.
The American Pain Foundation – an industry-funded promoter of painkillers - closed its doors last week amid a federal inquiry. Here's how some top-notch journalists helped make it happen.
Journalists from big name organizations better move over. The notebook or microphone next to you at medical conferences is now likely to be in the hand of someone living with the diagnosis being discussed.
A new company aims to clean up the FDA's messy data for reporting drug adverse events and market it to pharma and other businesses. Health reporters can benefit from the company's work, too.
How did we get to the point where we actually pay popular doctors more for our health care? No such system exists in any other professional or non-professional field. You can’t even pay your plumber less if she has a lower customer satisfaction score.
Do you want to better report on drug addiction and treatment? Avoid having Slate’s Jack Shafer feature your work in his Stupid Drug Story of the Week feature? Then follow these 15 tips from veteran journalist Maia Szalavitz.
