Events, trends, issues, ideas and journalism about health care and health in Kentucky
Sealed documents about marketing of OxyContin, which some experts say started the epidemic of prescription-drug abuse, will become public if the order of a Pike County judge is upheld. Circuit...
Oxycontin tablets (Los Angeles Times photo by Liz Baylen) Why have so many people become addicted to the painkiller OxyContin? We know about the overselling of the drug by its...
By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News With nearly one of three opioid prescriptions being abused, employers are not only subsidizing the cost of these drugs, they are also paying for...
By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News The fifth annual national summit on prescription drug abuse, started by U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky, was the largest, broadest and highest-profile yet....
Graphic from CDC guideline brochure Kentucky Health News Doctors who prescribe highly addictive painkillers for chronic pain should stop and be much more careful to thwart “an epidemic of prescription...
The U.S. Senate passed a bill 94-1 March 10 aimed at “the growing epidemic of painkiller and heroin abuse,” Karoun Demirjian reports for The Washington Post. “Drug abuse has been...
The epidemic of opioid abuse, which is running strong in Kentucky, got a good deal of attention in Washington last week, in Congress, at the White House and at a...
Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky chart; click on it for larger version Northern Kentucky is the hotbed of heroin addiction in Kentucky, but use of the narcotic appears to be...
By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News Kentucky journalists were challenged by policy makers, health experts and health journalists to write about Kentucky’s health issues and were presented with many story...
By Melissa Patrick Kentucky Health News The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Nora Volkow, told a group of Kentucky journalists and others at the Foundation for...