I want to share with you this insightful article concerning the opioid crisis, “The Role of Healthcare Professionals in Opioid Addiction Prevention,” written by Holly Geyer, M.D., an addiction medicine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona and author of Ending the Crisis: May Clinic’s Guide to Opioid Addiction and Safe Opioid Use. The article provides important information regarding where we are with the opioid crisis, risk factors that contribute to an individual developing an opioid use disorder or possibly experiencing an opioid overdose.
A Mayo Clinic quality improvement project identified that patients who had surgery consumed an average of one-third of opioids provided; 70 percent of patients with leftovers stored them for future use.
"Leftover opioids cause problems, especially when used for indications other than prescribed," said Dr. Geyer. "They are particularly dangerous when they get into the hands of kids who can't handle the dose or potency." The Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey initiated the American Medicine Chest Challenge campaign that encourages patients to take opioid medications as prescribed, maintain an inventory of the medications, secure them properly, dispose of them when no longer being taken, and talk to children about the dangers of opioids. Additional information on where to safely dispose of your unused and unwanted medications can be found at AmericanMedicineChest.com
The article confirms the strategies the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey and our partners throughout the state continue to advocate for. We certainly had encouraging news in NJ with a significant reduction in the number of overdoses that occurred in 2024, but obviously more work needs to be done on this issue.
PDFNJ is excited that Dr. Geyer will be one of the presenters at tomorrow's webinar “Preventing Opioid Misuse & Addiction”. This is the second webinar in 2025’s Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day Learning Series held in collaboration New Jersey’s Office of Alternative and Community Responses (OACR) and the Opioid Education Foundation of America.