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Statewide Needs Assessment of Primary Prevention for Substance Abuse (SNAPS) Final Report
You know you’re a health policy nerd when the back-and-forth action of this spring’s NCAA basketball tournament reminds you of public health legislation in Colorado. Wondering how action on the court translates to action at the state Capitol? I’ll explain.
Republicans and Democrats have taken turns advancing their offensive playbooks by introducing public health bills over the past couple years. But opponents have played solid defense, blocking the easy lay up to the governor’s desk.
Colorado Reaches a Record High for Overdose Fatalities. Again.
More Coloradans have been dying of drug overdoses each year for nearly a decade. It’s a health crisis that’s been increasingly in the public eye, but the newest data are still startling: Some 912 people died of an overdose in 2016 – a state record. Preliminary data from 2017 suggest that more than 950 died of an overdose last year.
Three pillars of a policy response and where the Colorado legislature’s actions match up to the evidence
A Report for the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing Conducted by CHI
Between 2012 and early 2017, I was part of a policy team at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that helped to advise then-Secretary Sylvia Burwell on a wide range of health policy topics, including the best available evidence to combat the opioid epidemic.
It was an important task. Drug overdose deaths claimed more than 52,000 lives in the U.S. in 2015 alone, with more than 33,000 from opioids. To put that in perspective, at the peak of the AIDS epidemic in 1995, the disease claimed 51,000 lives.
Most states have turned to managed care to get their Medicaid costs under control — with varying levels of success. Colorado has a handful of programs that use elements of managed care. This report serves as an introduction to the issue.
President Donald Trump today declared opioid abuse a nationwide public health emergency and said his administration will take aggressive steps to address the epidemic’s causes and effects.
“It is time to liberate our communities from this scourge of drug addiction,” he said in a speech at the White House. “I am directing all executive agencies to use every appropriate emergency authority to fight the opioid crisis.”
I found my job at the Colorado Health Institute by typing “health policy Colorado” into Google.
CHI was the first search result. And in August 2013 it was looking for a research assistant.
The job description fit my skill set, and CHI seemed like the type of organization I wanted to work for. Most importantly, I had the same positive gut reaction that brought me from Boston to Denver after visiting my best friend at the University of Denver months earlier.
It’s been nearly four years since that lucky Google search.