DUBLIN, Ohio, Nov. 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cardinal
Health (NYSE: CAH) today launched its new
Opioid Action Program, aimed at helping communities in four
of the nation's hardest-hit states across Appalachia combat the
opioid epidemic. The pilot program will deliver much
needed front-line tools to help prevent opioid abuse and
support first responders in Ohio,
Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.
The Opioid Action
Program has four elements, each cited by leading
experts as critical to the fight to reduce opioid abuse and
casualties. (Please visit
www.cardinalhealth.com/opioidactionprogram and/or read Additional
Details section below).
Specifically, Cardinal Health will:
- Purchase approximately 80,000 doses of the
overdose-reversing drug, Narcan® (naloxone HCI) Nasal
Spray 4mg, for distribution free-of-charge for first
responders and law enforcement officials in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and West
Virginia.
- Significantly ramp up its
existing support for successful drug
'take back' and education programs. This
initiative continues the work done, for several
years, through the Cardinal Health Foundation's
partnership with The Ohio State
University College of Pharmacy, including take
back events to occur in collaboration with
local business and law enforcement in 13 communities across
Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and West
Virginia where Cardinal Health has employees.
- Invest $3 million to expand grants focused
on youth prevention education, prescriber opioid awareness and
reduction efforts and community responses to the epidemic in
the four Appalachian states.
- Partner with the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown
University to share medical school curricula that
addresses opioid misuse and treatment through a
collaboration with medical schools located in Appalachia and
throughout the country.
Cardinal Health will evaluate the success and
impact of this pilot program and seek opportunities to expand
it into additional states and communities. The company will
actively look to partner with others willing
to support programs that prevent drug
addiction. The four pilot states were selected based
on a combination of factors, including need around this
devastating issue, proximity to Cardinal
Health's headquarters in Ohio and the
company's existing operational presence that will provide
opportunities for engagement from Cardinal Health
employees.
George Barrett, chairman and CEO
of Cardinal Health, said, "Opioid addiction and abuse
has harmed too many people in our home state of
Ohio, across Appalachia and
around the country. The men and woman of Cardinal Health are
committed to being a part of the solution and we believe our
Opioid Action Program will have a meaningful and positive
impact. This program is intended to build on the important work we
have done over the years to bring more resources to
communities that need them, with a focus on known
solutions that will help families and communities combat this
epidemic. We look forward to partnering with other companies and
organizations to leverage our commitment to help solve this complex
public health crisis."
The Opioid Action Program builds
on Cardinal Health's decade-long efforts to combat abuse
and addiction and is designed to provide scalable solutions
that the company can share with other companies and
organizations. Nearly a decade ago, the Cardinal Health
Foundation partnered with The Ohio State
University College of Pharmacy to create the Generation
Rx educational program to raise awareness and
knowledge about the dangers of prescription drug misuse. Since
that time, the Cardinal Health Foundation has invested
millions of dollars and reached over one million people
through partnerships and grants with
non-profits across the country. The Opioid Action
Program represents an important next step in combatting this
tragic epidemic.
Dr. Ken Hale, Clinical
Professor, Pharmacy Practice and Science, The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy,
said: "We have worked with the Cardinal Health Foundation to
develop and expand Generation Rx and its educational
materials and programming for nearly ten years. I am proud of the
work we have done together to reach and educate people of all ages
about the hazards of prescription drug misuse. The Opioid
Action Program is a major expansion of the existing
Generation Rx program and will enable our educational
materials to reach even more people in communities that are
fighting the opioid epidemic."
Dr. Nick
Hagemeier, Associate Professor at the Gatton College of
Pharmacy, East Tennessee State
University, and Research Director of ETSU's Center for
Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment, said: "Combining
multiple evidence-based approaches, and using them simultaneously,
can help turn the tide of the opioid epidemic. Cardinal
Health's Opioid Action Program does just that – by
expanding their work in prevention education and provider
education, donating life-saving Narcan® and increasing support for
community drug take-back events."
Dr. Jeff Gray, Associate
Professor at the Gatton College of Pharmacy, East Tennessee State University, Adjunct Professor,
Department of Community & Behavioral Health, College of Public
Health and co-principal investigator on a multi-year National
Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) grant focused on medication storage
and disposal, said: "We're proud of the work we've done with the
Cardinal Health Foundation in helping develop the Generation
Rx drug disposal grant program. Cardinal
Health's Opioid Action Program will build upon that
effort, providing increased support for drug take back events that
help remove unwanted or expired medications from the home while
also giving communities the opportunity to educate consumers about
the importance of proper disposal."
Appendix
Additional Details about Cardinal Health's Opioid Action
Program
Cardinal Health's Opioid Action Program
brings new resources to Appalachian communities to help fight the
opioid epidemic, building on the education and prevention work that
Cardinal Health has done since 2009.
The program leverages Cardinal Health's position
in a complex and highly regulated supply chain, in
which the company, as a pharmaceutical wholesale
distributor, is responsible for safely and securely delivering
medications and medical supplies of all kinds, from
the manufacturers that make them to the thousands of
government-authorized pharmacies that fill doctors' prescriptions
for patients. The program expands Cardinal Health's
longstanding education initiatives
and reflects what a wide range of subject
matter experts, including the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine (NASEM) and the President's Commission on
Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, have called
the most needed and most effective solutions to this
problem.
This initiative is rooted in Cardinal
Health's goal of preventing the diversion of
controlled substances to illegitimate use and investing in
programs that provide communities with necessary tools to fight
this epidemic. Cardinal Health
operates a state-of-the-art system that
uses advanced analytics, technology and on-the-ground
deployment of investigators to evaluate all pharmacies,
scrutinize all pharmaceutical shipments and identify,
block and report to regulators suspicious orders of pain
medications that do not meet
strict criteria. Nearly a decade of investment
in the Generation Rx initiative through
the Cardinal Health Foundation has brought prescription
drug abuse prevention education and drug take back events
to more than a million people nationwide, from school children
to senior citizens.
The Opioid Action Program will deliver needed
tools and resources to communities, students,
prescribers, law enforcement and first responders on the
front lines battling this epidemic. The program focuses
on four key areas:
1. Distribution of Narcan® Free-of-Charge for First
Responders and Law Enforcement
To help save lives in some of
the nation's hardest-hit communities and provide resources to first
responders, Cardinal Health has purchased nearly 80,000 doses of
Narcan®, which the NASEM identified as a life-saving medication
that reverses opioid overdoses, for distribution free-of-charge for
first responders and law enforcement. The company will provide
Narcan® to the Kentucky State
Police and the Great Rivers Harm Reduction Coalition in
West Virginia through a
distribution program with the University of
Charleston School of Pharmacy.
As part of this program, Cardinal Health is inviting interested
and qualified entities in any of the four states who provide
Narcan® for first responders to apply to receive Narcan®
free-of-charge through this online portal.
Adapt Pharma, the manufacturer of Narcan®, the only FDA-approved
nasal naloxone that does not require assembly or any specialized
medical training to use, is supporting Cardinal Health's effort as
part of its overall push to help save the lives of those battling
addiction. The NASEM and the President's Commission on Combating
Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis both urge expanding access to
life-saving medications.1 According to the CDC, fatal
opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 19992, and the
Opioid Action Program will support the important work of
first responders to reduce overdose deaths.
2. Student and Prescriber Education and Community
Support
Experts from the CDC, NASEM and the President's
Commission on the Opioid Crisis, among others, all point to
overprescribing as a key driver of the opioid epidemic and to
increased prescriber and public education as a critical tool to
fight it.3
The Cardinal Health Foundation, supporting the findings of those
independent experts, is committed to building on its prevention
education and opioid misuse curriculum. Through the
existing Generation Rx prescription drug misuse prevention
education programming, Cardinal Health is significantly expanding
its work with a variety of new grant programs. Generation Rx
is a partnership of the Cardinal Health Foundation and The
Ohio State University College of
Pharmacy that focuses on prevention education, prescriber education
and community collaborations. Generation Rx offers free,
downloadable resources anyone can use to teach others about the
dangers of prescription drug misuse. Every day, more than 1,600
young adults and about 3,100 adults aged 26 or older misuse a pain
medication for the first time4, and more than
a quarter of teenagers mistakenly believe that misusing and abusing
prescription drugs is safer than using street
drugs.5
The Cardinal Health Foundation is adding $25,000 to $35,000 grants for 30 to 50 non-profit
organizations in the four pilot states to expand prevention
education in K-12 schools and universities. These grants are
designed to reach thousands of students in schools, after-school
programming and through various youth organizations.
To further support prevention education, the Cardinal Health
Foundation and The Ohio State
University College of Pharmacy are working with Kroger to
train more than 250 pharmacists this year who will educate students
in classrooms throughout Ohio,
using Generation Rx open source materials. Colleen Lindholz, President of Kroger's
Pharmacies & The Little Clinics (TLC), reports that in the past
few months Kroger has educated more than 800 students and teachers,
which supports the pharmacy's and TLC's mission of "connecting with
customers on an emotional and personal level."
The Cardinal Health Foundation will also be making 20 to 30
Generation Rx grants of $25,000 to
$50,000 each to healthcare institutions throughout the four
pilot states. These grants will support training for prescribers
working at those institutions to transform the way they help
patients understand and manage their pain, with fewer opioids
prescribed.
The Cardinal Health Foundation encourages all potential grantees
to use the CDC's Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain
in developing their applications.
As Ohio is home to Cardinal
Health's headquarters as well as nearly 7,000 of the company's
employees, a third grant opportunity will be available targeting
hard-hit communities in Ohio. This
grant opportunity is informed by the National League of
Cities/National Association of Counties report A Prescription
for Action – Local Leadership in Ending the Opioid
Crisis6, the Drug Enforcement Agency's DEA 360
Strategy7 and the Surgeon General's report,
Facing Addiction in America.8 The grants will
fund community collaboratives that are working to reduce opioid
addiction, overdoses and opioid-related deaths. Such collaboratives
include leaders (or their representatives) from multiple sectors in
the community, including healthcare, law enforcement, education,
local business, service providers, government, funding
organizations and/or volunteer organizations. Funded collaboratives
will work on two or more specific tactics to address the opioid
crisis, such as prevention education, prescriber education,
implementing or expanding drug take back events, increasing access
to treatment, implementing or expanding drug courts, improving
outcomes for babies born addicted to opioids and/or influencing
policy. The Cardinal Health Foundation expects to fund five
Ohio communities with grants of
$75,000 to $100,000 each.
Visit www.CardinalHealth.com/GenerationRX to learn more about
Cardinal Health Foundation's Generation Rx programs and to
apply for the Foundation's grant programs.
3. Supporting Drug Take Back Events
Cardinal
Health will invest more resources to shine a brighter light on and
emphasize the importance of drug take back events. The company will
sponsor take back events in 2018 in 13 communities across the four
pilot states where Cardinal Health has associates and locations.
Take back events are designed to provide a safe, convenient, and
anonymous way to dispose of unused or expired medications.
According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, nearly 54%
of those who misused prescription painkillers obtained them from a
friend or relative.9 The Geisinger Center for Health
Research also found that only about 11% of unused medication is
disposed of properly.10 The NASEM recommendations
include the need for improved consumer access to convenient and
year-round drug take back events, to reduce the amount of unused
medications available for misuse.11
Supporting drug take back events is a priority of Generation
Rx. These new take back events follow Cardinal Health's
partnership with Kroger in Ohio
where the company has sponsored take back days in communities
throughout the state in support of National Prescription Drug Take
Back Day.
4. Medical School Training
Cardinal Health is
launching a new partnership with the Warren Alpert Medical School
of Brown University to engage other
medical schools to help generate and disseminate curricula and best
practices that focus on responsible prescribing of opioids to train
the next generation of physicians. One goal of the program is to
expand the number of physicians who receive Drug Abuse Treatment
Act (DATA) waivers enabling them to prescribe treatments for opioid
use disorder.12 Engaging with the medical education
community about the risks associated with opioid overprescribing
and sharing the CDC's new Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for
Chronic Pain13 has been recommended by experts to
help reduce overprescribing in medical practice. The curricula
currently in use at the Warren Alpert School will help more than 30
fourth-year medical students gain the training required to
prescribe medication-assisted therapy for opioid use disorder under
a first-in-the-nation program implemented in partnership with the
state of Rhode Island.
About Cardinal Health
Cardinal Health, Inc. is a
global, integrated healthcare services and products company,
providing customized solutions for hospitals, healthcare systems,
pharmacies, ambulatory surgery centers, clinical laboratories and
physician offices worldwide. The company provides clinically proven
medical products and pharmaceuticals and cost-effective solutions
that enhance supply chain efficiency from hospital to home.
Cardinal Health connects patients, providers, payers, pharmacists
and manufacturers for integrated care coordination and better
patient management. Because Cardinal Health helps ensure
pharmacists and the consumers they serve have access to medications
they need while working to help prevent prescription drug
diversion, the company and its education partners created
Generation Rx, a national program to help prevent the misuse of
prescription medications. Cardinal Health is backed by nearly 100
years of experience, with approximately 50,000 employees in nearly
60 countries. For more information, visit cardinalhealth.com,
follow @CardinalHealth on Twitter and connect on LinkedIn at
linkedin.com/ company/cardinal-health.
About the Cardinal Health Foundation
The Cardinal
Health Foundation supports local, national and international
programs that improve health care efficiency, effectiveness and
excellence and the overall wellness of the communities where
Cardinal Health, Inc.'s (NYSE:CAH) more than 40,000 employees live
and work. The Cardinal Health Foundation also offers grants to
encourage community service among its employees and works through
international agencies to donate much-needed medical supplies and
funding to those who need them in times of disaster; because
Cardinal Health, Inc. is #AllInForGood. To learn more, visit
www.CardinalHealth.com/community and visit the Facebook page at
www.facebook.com/CardinalHealthFoundation.
1 The National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering and Medicine, Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic:
Balancing Societal and Individual Benefits and Risks of
Prescription Opioid Use. Available online at:
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24781/pain-management-and-the-opioid-epidemic-balancing-societal-and-individual.
The President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the
Opioid Crisis, final report. Available online at:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/Final_Report_Draft_11-1-2017.pdf
2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Available online at:
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html
3 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Available online at:
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/prevention/prescribing.html.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Pain
Management and the Opioid Epidemic: Balancing Societal and
Individual Benefits and Risks of Prescription Opioid Use. Available
online at:
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24781/pain-management-and-the-opioid-epidemic-balancing-societal-and-individual.
The President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the
Opioid Crisis, final report. Available online at:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/Final_Report_Draft_11-1-2017.pdf.
4 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration. 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
Available online:
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-FFR2-2015/NSDUH-FFR2-2015.htm
5 Survey Results from The Partnership for Drug Free
Kids and the MetLife Foundation. Available online at:
https://drugfree.org/newsroom/news-item/national-study-teen-misuse-and-abuse-of-prescription-drugs-up-33-percent-since-2008-stimulants-contributing-to-sustained-rx-epidemic/
6 National League of Cities and National
Association of Counties, A Prescription for Action. Available
online at: http://opioidaction.org/report/.
7 Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA 360 Strategy.
Available online at
https://www.dea.gov/prevention/360-strategy/360-strategy.shtml.
8 United States Surgeon General, Facing Addiction
in America Report. Available online at
https://addiction.surgeongeneral.gov/.
9 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration, 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
Available online at:
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-FFR2-2015/NSDUH-FFR2-2015.htm
10 Geisinger Center for Health Research. Available
online at:
https://www.geisinger.org/about-geisinger/news-and-media/news-releases/2017/03/24/18/30/study-highlights-most-common-medications-left-unused-by-patients
11 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and
Medicine, Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic: Balancing
Societal and Individual Benefits and Risks of Prescription Opioid
Use. Available online at:
https://www.nap.edu/resource/24781/Highlights_071317_Opioids.pdf
12 Elinore McCance-Katz, MD, PhD, Paul George, MD, MHPE, Nicole Alexander Scott, MD, MPH, Richard Dollase, EdD, Allan R. Tunkel, PhD, James McDonald, MD, MPH. Brief Report: Access to
Treatment for Opioid Use Disorders: Medical Student Preparation.
The American Journal on Addictions, 26: 316-318. 2017.
13 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC
Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. Available
online at
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/prescribing/guideline.html.
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