One important strategy we have with regard to the opioid epidemic is raising awareness about opioids and the risks of prescription opioids and illicit opioids. So there's a number of strategies for getting information out to the public and raising that awareness that is so important to this epidemic. So one venue in which education can happen is in the clinical venue. So clinical encounters are a place where prescription opioids are dispensed, so it makes sense that it would be a good venue for having a discussion about opioids and the risks and benefits of these medications. In the clinical contexts, the communication between prescriber and patient is a great opportunity to raise awareness about opioids. Opioid treatment agreements are ways that prescribers, and patients can talk through the risks and benefits of prescription opioids, and come to an agreement about proper use, about proper storage, and about safe strategies for disposal as well. We've also seen a number of strategies for delivering educational messages through the clinical environment, either through written materials, or more electronic delivery of information, and even some strategies that use M-Health interventions to teach people about the risks and benefits of prescription opioids, and to engage people with conversations, and thinking about alternatives to opioids for managing pain. We also hear a lot about the potential of public education campaigns. So we're accustomed to hearing messages about health than risks to health through different public channels. So through television, through social media, different government agencies develop, and disseminate campaigns on a variety of topics and certainly the opioid epidemic is no stranger to this type of strategy for raising awareness among the public. I've pictured here on these slides, a couple of examples of public education campaigns that have been released by the National Institute of Drug Abuse as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So these kinds of public education campaigns are aimed toward parents. They're aimed at educators of all levels of our educational system. They're aimed at children. They're aimed at clinicians. So there's a number of these kins of initiatives that are underway, that are really focused on this goal of raising awareness about opioids, and the risks and benefits of prescription opioids, and illicit opioids as well. However, much like the messaging that happens in the clinical environment. There's really not a lot of data on the impact of these kinds of campaigns on outcomes such as opioid use disorders, and opioid overdose. So again these are promising strategies that we need to be strategic about, and that we need to assure evaluations are occurring so that we can use this strategy in the most effective best possible way. Importantly, what we know from past public education campaigns is that oftentimes, these educational messages are most impactful when they're paired with concrete recommendations as to what can be done to engage in the behaviors that are promoted. So for instance, we've seen a number of instances around the country where community education initiatives have paired these educational messages with access to naloxone for instance, or with information about prescribing, or with information about safe storage and disposal. So campaigns that provide not just information to raise awareness about a particular problem, in this case opioids, but provide direction and resources for what the recipients of those messages can do to address the problem, are generally reviewed as most effective ways to use those public education messages. Part of our efforts to engage patients and the general public really need to focus around safe storage and disposal messages, and the resources available to safely store and dispose of prescription opioids. I can't emphasize enough how important safe storage and disposal strategies are. We know from surveys of people with opioid use disorder, from surveys of people who have survived overdose, that sharing a prescription opioids is all too common. We also know that there's a risk associated with holding on to those old prescriptions once we're done with them. In many surveys that have been conducted at this point, we see reports of people hanging on to their old prescriptions, and I would challenge listeners to think about what's in your medicine cabinet at home. We need to get out of the practice as a country, of retaining those prescription opioids once we're finished using them. Because again, this is an important source of diversion for people who are looking to use these medications for non-medical purposes. There's also an opportunity with regard to engaging patients and the general public around safe storage practices. So again, our national surveys have repeatedly shown us that it's a minority of people with prescription opioids, who store their prescription opioids in a locked way. This allows for those prescription opioids to be easily accessible by people who weren't prescribed to use them, and again, another source of diversion for those initial users. Safe storage and disposal practices really are something that we can do a lot better with, make more available in our communities, and it's really an opportunity to intervene in a meaningful way with strategies that are completely within our reach. We have a couple of recommendations to improve public engagement around the opioid epidemic. Our first recommendation is to convene a stakeholder meeting with broad representation to create guidance that will help communities undertake comprehensive approaches that address the supply of, and demand for prescription opioids in their locales. Importantly, we also want to make sure that those guidance and strategies are implemented and evaluated in ways that allow us to model these approaches. I can't emphasize enough how important the evaluation piece of this recommendation is. We're investing a lot in public education campaigns, and messaging and we need to know what messages are effective, and how they can be effectively delivered in order to reduce opioid misuse, and reduce opioid use disorders in the population. We also recommend that there be an inter-agency task force convened to assure that current and future national public health education campaigns about prescription opioids, are informed by the available evidence and the best practices are shared. The importance of using evidence to inform our strategies for communication really cannot be emphasized enough. We have a history of evidence around effective ways to communicate with the public, and that evidence really needs to be brought forward to inform our public health education campaigns around this issue as well. We also recommend providing clear and consistent guidance on safe storage of prescription opioids. Again, our surveys tell us that prescription opioids taken from homes of family and friends are an important way that people access opioids that are misused. Our final recommendation is to provide clear and consistent guidance on safe disposal of prescription opioids and expand take-back programs in communities all across our country. By expanding take-back programs, we can offer people a mechanism for following that guidance on safe disposal and, provide them with a tangible means of safely disposing their unused prescription opioids.
