Local Addiction Clinic Gets $1.4M In Federal Funds To Help Fight Opioid Crisis
The funds will be used to expand services, ramp up outreach to new patients and hire a new psychologist who can work more closely with primary care staff to identify and respond to possible opioid overuse.
Santa Rosa Press Democrat:
North Coast Clinics Get $1.4 Million To Battle Opioid Crisis
The national opioid epidemic claimed a total of 45 lives through overdoses in 2016 in Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino counties, a region that saw nearly 620,000 total opioid pain prescriptions written last year, according to the latest state data. That same year brought 1,925 overdose deaths, 3,935 emergency visits and 4,095 overdose hospitalizations, the grim harvest of a medical crisis health officials and medical providers are trying their best to address. (Espinoza, 9/15)
In other public health news —
The Bakersfield Californian:
Toxic Stress Is A Killer — What Can We Do About It?
Much attention has recently been paid to toxic stress and childhood trauma, clinically known as adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, in the San Joaquin Valley. The California Endowment, a private nonprofit dedicated to improving health care and creating healthy communities, released a report this year calling toxic stress a “hidden health crisis.” It stated that toxic stress is most pervasive in Kern County, killing middle-aged white men at numbers never seen before while setting others on a course of alcoholism, drug abuse, depression and suicide. (Pierce, 9/16)