Formulating Effective Policies to Prevent Drug Overdose

A wealth of research has emerged to understand the epidemiology, identify impactful programs, and formulate effective policies to prevent drug overdose. The Center is committed to assuring that what is known through research is translated to policymakers and practitioners. The Center remains firmly committed to the principles of: 

• Informing Action with Evidence by scaling up and widely disseminating evidence-based interventions and rigorously evaluating promising, evidence-informed ideas while continuing to search for new, innovative solutions. 

• Intervening Comprehensively by creating synergies across different interventions to maximize available resources and through our support of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies aimed at stopping individuals from progressing down a pathway that will lead to misuse, addiction, and overdose, including approaches that intervene along the supply chain, and in the clinic, community, and addiction treatment settings.  

• Promoting Appropriate and Safe Use of Prescription Opioids through our support of efforts to maximize the favorable risk-benefit balance of prescription opioids by optimizing their use in circumstances supported by evidence-based clinical practice with attention to safe use, storage, and disposal of opioids.  

For more information, check out the latest report. https://www.jhsph.edu/events/2017/americas-opioid-epidemic/report/2017-JohnsHopkins-Opioid-digital.pdf