The United States faces several ongoing public health issues including the opioid epidemic. This article describes a new model aimed at providing a framework that incorporates the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to develop pharmacy student leaders through education, experiences, and development of critical skills. This…

Opioid overdose deaths are dramatically increasing in the United States and disproportionately affecting minority communities, with the increasing presence of fentanyl exacerbating this crisis. Developing community coalitions is a long-standing strategy used to address public health issues. However, there is a limited understanding of how…

The opioid overdose epidemic continues to disproportionately impact underserved rural areas throughout the nation, with many of these rural areas experiencing greater opioid-related mortality rates than their urban counterparts. With limited treatment infrastructure and resources, two rural communities in Southeast Utah utilized community-based…

Objective: Opioid use and the risk of opioid overdose are growing public health concerns for college-aged adults. Naloxone can temporarily reverse opioid overdoses, but only if easily accessible. On most college campuses, "blue light" phones (BLPs)--call boxes topped with a blue light--offer visible access to emergency services. We…

This study assesses adults' perceptions of and predictors of intention to use prescription drug take-back boxes. This mixed methods study utilized focus groups and an online survey to examine factors related to intention to use a prescription drug take-back box. This study was conducted in [State] during the spring and summer of 2018. Themes…

Drug addiction and misuse have long plagued communities throughout the country, with drug overdose claiming more than 750,000 lives over the past two decades. As the crisis is multifaceted, it requires and beckons all sectors to respond, including the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. This creates unique data sharing challenges. In response…

This is part II of a two-part series on integrating a physical activity component in delivering health lessons to elementary and middle school students. The purpose of this series is to illustrate how health content can be implemented with hands-on activities, physical experiments, visual illustrations that are associated with a specific lesson…

A revised way of thinking is essential for promoting harm reduction strategies and reducing the negative implications of injection drug use (IDU). Despite the growth of harm reduction approaches in the United States, there is limited guidance for designing and implementing multi-sector efforts that address the external determinants that promote…

Objective: Access to naloxone is a priority for reducing opioid overdose deaths. Although participants who receive naloxone training are able to successfully administer it, the impact of training on community member knowledge and attitudes has not been explored. Participants: A total of 105 participants 18 years and older at a medium-sized…

Background: Fentanyl has become increasingly present in the illicit drug supply, including in cocaine. Interventions that target non-opioid use are a necessary component of overdose prevention due to the increased presence of fentanyl. Objectives: To assess management and staff reception to overdose prevention messaging and access to naloxone in…

Using a case example from a mid-sized town in East Central Indiana, this article illustrates the development and implementation of a community-academic partnership (CAP), a novel approach to addressing substance misuse in local communities. A CAP can be defined as a formal, strategic partnership between the local community and university faculty,…

Introduction: Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a critical health issue in the USA. Pennsylvania has the third highest number of drug overdose deaths per year, with the COVID-19 pandemic worsening these trends. Stigmatising beliefs towards OUD are associated with negative health outcomes, and there is a need for a larger evidence base on OUD stigma…

Many of the policies shown to benefit the public's health in research studies are never widely implemented. We conducted a qualitative and exploratory multiple-case study of three U.S. academic research-policy translation initiatives that resulted in the development, enactment and/or implementation of evidence-based policies to address public…

This article offers a longitudinal computational-rhetorical analysis of biomedical writing on opioids. Using a corpus of 1,467 articles and essays published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" and the "Journal of the American Medical Association" between 1959 and May 2019, this study evaluates diachronic shifts in (a) the…

This study is the first to analyze public response to a drug take-back program, the American Medicine Chest Challenge, in a single state over a period of 3 years (2010-2012). The study utilized a three-wave repeated cross-sectional design and an annual phone survey conducted with a representative sample of adults (N = 906 in 2010, N = 907 in 2011,…