President Donald J. Trump recently awarded Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James the National Humanities Medal “for her intellectual leadership, devotion to our constitutional principles, and steadfast commitment to opportunity for all.”
Ohio Valley ReSource
Since 2012, the 2nd Chance Center for Addiction Treatment has served people in Lexington, Kentucky. The office sits on a busy street on the city’s north side. Similar to the heavy traffic that passes by, clients seeking treatment for substance and opioid use disorders steadily stream in and out of the building.
But in 2020, the clinic had to limit that flow of patients as it changed its protocols to adhere to COVID-19 restrictions. Group therapy and individual counseling meetings stopped. In-person meetings moved to online video calls as telehealth appointments became an alternative.
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For one 2nd Chance client receiving treatment, the pandemic’s disruption has been searing.
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Some 81,000 people died of a drug overdose between May 2019 and May 2020. It’s the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period and the main culprit was synthetic opioids.
But the Biden administration’s plan to combat the opioid crisis remains unclear. The president has delayed former President Donald Trump’s plan to make it easier for physicians to prescribe opioid-treatment drugs. The move has been criticized by medical professionals who have said the plan would have helped their patients dealing with prescription drug addictions.
Some opioid crisis stakeholders are especially frustrated given that President Biden has lagged on nominating heads for federal agencies that would combat the crisis, including the Food and Drug Administration, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Around the nation: How a snowy traffic jam became an impromptu Covid-19 vaccination site
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Health care workers in Cave Junction, Oregon, were returning from a Covid-19 vaccination site when they got stuck on a shut-down highway in the snow and because their extra vaccine doses were in danger of expiring, they walked from car to car, offering vaccines to other people stuck in traffic, in today s bite-sized hospital and health industry news from the District of Columbia, Indiana, and Oregon.
District of Columbia: The Biden administration on Wednesday said it was calling off a plan announced by former President Donald Trump s administration that would make it easier for more physicians to prescribe buprenorphine, a medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorders. The Trump administration had directed federal agencies update guidelines to exempt physicians with a
With Biden Team Focused On Other Crises, Experts Say Drug Epidemic Is Exploding
at 9:18 am NPR
In the weeks after winning the November election, Joe Biden began naming officials to tackle the vortex of crises his administration would face on day one.
There was a team for the coronavirus, a team for climate change, a team for racial justice and a team for the stricken economy.
But despite a soaring death rate from drug overdoses, which hit a grim new record in 2020, President Biden hasn t named permanent leaders for three key agencies tasked with tackling the drug epidemic: the Food and Drug Administration, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Drug Enforcement Administration.