AJPM-NOW: Substance Abuse, Immunizations, Child Health
December 2017
From the Editor-in-Chief
Dear AJPM reader,
The public health community has mobilized in addressing the U.S. opioid epidemic, which has been declared a national public health emergency. In this month’s issue, Christopher Ruhm provides new state-based estimates for 2014 opioid and heroin mortality in his article, Geographic Variation in Opioid and Heroin Involved Drug Poisoning Mortality Rates, suggesting rates are substantially higher than previously reported. In Kral and Davidson’s article, Addressing the Nation’s Opioid Epidemic: Lessons from an Unsanctioned Supervised Injection Site in the U.S., the authors detail the implementation of an unconventional but evidence-based harm reduction strategy in a U.S. city that successfully reduced instances of public injection and episodes of public disposal of injection equipment over a two year period.
We hope you find both articles and our entire December issue topical and informative.
Researchers and policy makers need reliable cost information to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions and policies while also calculating costs averted through prevention. Read about the economics of hypertension and cardiovascular disease in our latest supplement.
