Drug Misuse State Level Advocacy
I will advocate for change at the state level for prescription management systems to continuously be used by healthcare providers. In addition, prescription management systems have been used frequently to decrease drug abuse; to add, pill mill laws also decrease drug abuse, but prescription management systems possibly relied upon more so than pill mill laws (Rutkow & Vernick, 2017). Plus, prescription management systems are databases, which are used to track the distribution of medication, patient drug history, and physicians who prescribe drugs (Rutkow & Vernick, 2017). Moreover, pill mill laws are used to enforce investigations upon pain management clinics and to make sure that these clinics have licenses to distribute medications (Rutkow & Vernick, 2017).
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2017), prescription management systems are used by health care providers to check patient histories of prescribed medications (CDC, 2017). To add, it is a requirement that these systems are checked by health care providers before they prescribe drugs such as Oxycontin to their patients (CDC, 2017). The following are some of the risk factors, which can cause patients to overdose opioids: Obtaining multiple pain-relievers from different clinics, a mental debilitation, and a history of binge drinking (CDC, 2017). In fact, Medicaid patients are more likely to overdose on medications because; they receive more long-acting pain relievers for pain, which can last for a short timeframe (CDC, 2017). Also, Medicaid patients can also receive multiple prescriptions for opioids from different clinics (CDC, 2017). The most common pain reliever overdosages had been due to medications such as “Methadone” (CDC, 2017) and “Hydrocodone” (CDC, 2017).
In addition, there had been “17,087 deaths” (CDC, 2017) in the United States of America in the year of “2016” (CDC, 2017). Changing Public Opinion and Importance of Collaboration The three key elements of changing public opinion can include the following: Talking to cohorts, call a radio talk show, and reading resources, which pertain to my research (Oklahoma Rehabilitation Council, 2016). To add, these three key elements are important for influencing policymakers because; discussing prescription misuse to friends, who are experts on the subject matter will help to me gain more information about prescription misuse. Plus, they may have ideas about what to information to share on a radio talk show to increase health awareness on drug abuse, so I can gain the attention of a policymaker. Hence, collaborating and communicating with groups of people such as health educators and health specialists can help collect more health information and to better educate the public.
Also, I feel that reading credible resources such as scholarly articles, which can include legislative references will help me to collect more impertinent information. Moreover, policymakers are also more likely to trust resources such as legislative references and government websites such as the National Institute for Health (Oklahoma Rehabilitation Council, 2016).
