Henry Young, UGA’s Kroger Associate Professor of Community Pharmacy, was quoted in a Men’s Health article about the opioid crisis in America.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 30,000 Americans die annually from opioid and prescription painkiller overdoses. Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts and Virginia have declared states of emergency for the opioid epidemic. Under that declaration, most states allowed law enforcement and the public to broadly dispense naloxone, an antidote that rapidly reverses the effects of opioids.
“So often, many of these conditions go undetected and undiagnosed,” said Young, who made a presentation about the crisis last month at Georgia’s sixth State of the Public’s Health conference, which was hosted at UGA by the College of Public Health. “This begins to change the narrative around substance use and shift that conversation from a stigmatizing condition to one that we’re all dealing with and need help with.”
