Massachusetts started sending email warning alerts to drug prescribers in 2013. But while some measures of drug abuse dropped in the following years, it’s hard to give credit to the alerts.
Community & Public Health
Banks tend to be very good at alerting you to potential credit card fraud. Can drug tracking programs do as good a job at flagging risky prescription scenarios?
When Erin Borrego was 15, she and her classmates started experimenting with opioid painkillers. It started with pills called Percocet and Lortab, but she quickly moved on to injecting heroin.
If there’s any police department that understands what an opioid epidemic means for a community, it’s New Mexico's Española Police Department. Even the chief of police has had addiction struggles within his own family.
A series of seven suicides within California’s Yurok Tribe in 2015 prompted the tribe to declare a state of emergency. In reporting on the aftermath, reporter Ryan Burns found himself facing some big challenges.
KUNM’s Ed Williams has been investigating the impacts of heroin addiction on children and families in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. The area has had one of the country’s highest overdose rates for decades. Here he takes a deep look at the issue in an hour-long radio documentary.
When kids are at high risk for addiction, a good public school system can be one of the most effective ways to prevent drug use. In Española public schools, teacher turnover and administrative problems have instead created instability for students.
Research shows early childhood education is one of the most effective ways to prevent drug use later in life. That’s especially important in New Mexico's Rio Arriba County, where an opioid epidemic has been raging for decades.
Española, New Mexico, has had one of the highest rates of heroin addiction in the country for decades. It’s a public health crisis that can create particular challenges for pregnant moms and their doctors.
After their daughter ended up with Tay-Sachs disease due to a lack of genetic screening, two fathers started pushing for change. They ended up creating the world’s largest funding organization for Tay-Sachs research.