Advertisement Banner
  • Home
  • News
    • PRESS RELEASE
  • Shop
  • BUSINESS
    • CRYPTO
    • ECONOMY
    • FINANCE
    • MARKET
    • MONEY
  • TECH
    • APPS
    • GADGET
    • MOBILE
    • SCIENCE
  • SOCIAL MEDIA
  • ENTERTAINMENT
    • ARTS & THEATER
    • GAMING
    • GAMBLING
    • MOVIE
    • MUSIC
    • SHOWS
    • SPORTS
  • LIFESTYLE
    • CELEBRITY
    • CULTURE
    • Education
    • FASHION
    • FOOD
    • HEALTH
    • HISTORY
    • Nature
    • Religion
    • Shopping
    • TRAVEL
  • REAL ESTATE
  • Blog
  • Classifieds
No Result
View All Result

No products in the cart.

  • Home
  • News
    • PRESS RELEASE
  • Shop
  • BUSINESS
    • CRYPTO
    • ECONOMY
    • FINANCE
    • MARKET
    • MONEY
  • TECH
    • APPS
    • GADGET
    • MOBILE
    • SCIENCE
  • SOCIAL MEDIA
  • ENTERTAINMENT
    • ARTS & THEATER
    • GAMING
    • GAMBLING
    • MOVIE
    • MUSIC
    • SHOWS
    • SPORTS
  • LIFESTYLE
    • CELEBRITY
    • CULTURE
    • Education
    • FASHION
    • FOOD
    • HEALTH
    • HISTORY
    • Nature
    • Religion
    • Shopping
    • TRAVEL
  • REAL ESTATE
  • Blog
  • Classifieds
No Result
View All Result
No Result
View All Result
Home HEALTH

Black Patients Less Likely to Get Treatment for Opioid Overdose

North Dakota Digital News by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
in HEALTH
38 1
0
Black Patients Less Likely to Get Treatment for Opioid Overdose
32
SHARES
356
VIEWS
Share on TwitterShare on Facebook


By Dennis Thompson 

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, May 11, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Medications that treat opioid addiction and prevent overdose deaths are drastically under-prescribed in the United States, particularly for Black patients, a new study has found.

Disabled people on Medicare are not likely to be prescribed either buprenorphine – the best medication for treating opioid addiction – or naloxone (Narcan), a drug that can reverse a life-threatening overdose, researchers report in the May 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Further, Black Americans are even less likely than whites to receive these meds following a medical event that clearly indicates the patient has opioid use disorder, said lead researcher Dr. Michael Barnett, an associate professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

“We found that white patients were about 80% more likely to get any treatment after one of these central events than Black patients,” Barnett said. “We were particularly surprised at how low the rates of treatment were, given the kind of high level of need and high risk in this particular population.”

For the study, Barnett and his colleagues analyzed claims data for more than 23,000 disabled people 18 and older covered by Medicare between 2016 and 2019.

This group is disproportionately affected by opioid addiction, with some estimates suggesting they represent one in four opioid overdoses in the United States, researchers said in background notes.

The researchers looked for events that would have brought a person’s opioid use disorder to the attention of a health professional – an overdose, a hospitalization for drug use-related infection or detox care, for example.

They then assessed whether the patient received a prescription for buprenorphine or naloxone within six months of that event.

Results showed that only 23% of white patients, 19% of Hispanic patients and 13% of Black patients received a buprenorphine prescription.

Buprenorphine is “a medication that is known to be pretty effective, and yet across the populations identified in the study, prescription rates are just pretty abysmal generally,” said Christine Khaikin, a senior health policy attorney for the Legal Action Center, an advocacy group for building health equity.

The rates were similarly low for naloxone – 23% for whites, 21% for Hispanics and 14% for Blacks.

Buprenorphine prescription rates could have been dampened by regulations that at the time restricted who could prescribe the treatment drug, Barnett noted. Those restrictions were recently lifted.

But for naloxone, “which has no such restrictions at all, we saw basically disparities of the exact same magnitude,” Barnett said. “There’s no reason why clinicians shouldn’t be prescribing this medication to people with overdoses, yet we saw a huge gap between white and Black.”

“And not only that, even though there’s a big gap between white and Black, the overall rates of people receiving any buprenorphine or naloxone were extremely low,” Barnett added.

What’s worse, patients identified with opioid addiction were more likely to be prescribed benzodiazepines — drugs typically used to treat anxiety that can dramatically increase risk of overdose when used with opioids.

About 37% of whites, 30% of Hispanics and 23% of Blacks were prescribed benzodiazepines within six months of an opioid-related health event, results show.

Researchers ruled out regional differences and patients’ access to medical care as potential explanations for the health inequities they uncovered, Barnett said.

“What we found here was that, as you would expect in a fairly sick population of folks with disability, white, Black and Hispanic patients were all seeing doctors quite frequently, including emergency visits and office visits with mental health and primary care providers,” Barnett said. “Yet, you’re still seeing this huge disparity.”

One potential explanation might be the disjointed nature of American health care, Barnett said. He noted that a recent study of the VA health system found much less disparity between whites and Blacks in treatment for opioid addiction – on the order of 42% versus 39%.

“To me, that suggests that maybe there’s something about the consistency and shared providers used by veterans that might be more of an equalizer than the very fragmented and segregated health care system that whites and Blacks engage with in other settings,” Barnett said.

The stigma surrounding opioid addiction also could play a factor, Barnett said.

“There’s just enormous amounts of stigma around opioid use disorder that make providers uninterested in treating these patients, and makes patients feel like they’re undeserving of treatment or that they don’t want to tell others about it,” Barnett said.

The criminalization of addiction through America’s war on drugs added to that stigma, Khaikin said. Blacks are less likely to trust doctors and seek care because there’s a real risk they’ll wind up behind bars.

“There is likely to be a criminal response to people of color who experience opioid use disorder,” Khaikin said. “We are still very much treating people with substance use disorders with a criminal response, and that needs to change.”

The United States needs to dramatically rethink its approach to opioid use disorder, treating it as an illness rather than a crime or a weakness in character, Barnett said.

“Health care providers need to feel that addiction is very common and it’s something that they should be able to treat,” Barnett said. “It’s part of what it means to be a clinician. It’s not somebody else’s job.”

The National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Aging funded the study.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse has more about effective treatments for opioid addiction.

 

 

SOURCES: Michael Barnett, MD, associate professor, health policy and management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Christine Khaikin, senior health policy attorney, Legal Action Center; New England Journal of Medicine, May 10, 2023

 

 

 

NEJMOpioids.pdf



Source link

Tweet8Share13Share3Share
Previous Post

Maine Has a State Ballad? Listen to the Song that Was Inspired By the Battle of Gettysburg

Next Post

Spinach Stuffed Salmon Recipe | The Recipe Critic

North Dakota Digital News

North Dakota Digital News

Next Post
Spinach Stuffed Salmon Recipe | The Recipe Critic

Spinach Stuffed Salmon Recipe | The Recipe Critic

Discussion about this post

Bismarck
◉
64°
Cloudy
6:13 am9:05 pm CDT
Feels like: 64°F
Wind: 8mph NE
Humidity: 84%
Pressure: 29.89"Hg
UV index: 0
FriSatSun
72/55°F
64/48°F
72/45°F
Weather forecast Bismarck, North Dakota ▸
Spinach Stuffed Salmon Recipe | The Recipe Critic
FOOD

Spinach Stuffed Salmon Recipe | The Recipe Critic

by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
Black Patients Less Likely to Get Treatment for Opioid Overdose
HEALTH

Black Patients Less Likely to Get Treatment for Opioid Overdose

by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
Maine Has a State Ballad? Listen to the Song that Was Inspired By the Battle of Gettysburg
HISTORY

Maine Has a State Ballad? Listen to the Song that Was Inspired By the Battle of Gettysburg

by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
California bill barring caste discrimination overwhelmingly passes state Senate
Religion

California bill barring caste discrimination overwhelmingly passes state Senate

by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
Ten People Charged for their Involvement in the Illegal Trafficking of … – Department of Justice
PRESS RELEASE

Dow’s Seadrift, Texas location selected for X-energy advanced SMR … – Dow Corporate

by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
Shopping Malls are Getting Desperate
Shopping

Shopping Malls are Getting Desperate

by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
Ten People Charged for their Involvement in the Illegal Trafficking of … – Department of Justice
PRESS RELEASE

Major League Baseball & Clubs to honor moms and raise breast … – MLB.com

by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
Elon Musk in Talks to Hire Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s New CEO
News

Elon Musk in Talks to Hire Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s New CEO

by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
Ten People Charged for their Involvement in the Illegal Trafficking of … – Department of Justice
PRESS RELEASE

Major League Baseball & Clubs to honor moms and raise breast cancer awareness on Mother’s Day – MLB.com

by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
Ten People Charged for their Involvement in the Illegal Trafficking of … – Department of Justice
PRESS RELEASE

Press Release | Press Releases | Newsroom | U.S. Senator Bill … – Senator Bill Cassidy

by North Dakota Digital News
May 12, 2023
Ten People Charged for their Involvement in the Illegal Trafficking of … – Department of Justice
PRESS RELEASE

Thune, Risch Reintroduce Bill to Release Afghanistan Dissent Cable – Senator John Thune

by North Dakota Digital News
May 11, 2023
Ten People Charged for their Involvement in the Illegal Trafficking of … – Department of Justice
PRESS RELEASE

Kennedy, Thune, Risch introduce bill to release Afghanistan dissent … – Kennedy.Senate.gov

by North Dakota Digital News
May 11, 2023

About Us

North Dakota Digital News

Category

  • APPS
  • ARTS & THEATER
  • BUSINESS
  • CELEBRITY
  • CRYPTO
  • CULTURE
  • ECONOMY
  • Education
  • ENTERTAINMENT
  • FASHION
  • FINANCE
  • FOOD
  • GADGET
  • Gambling
  • GAMING
  • HEALTH
  • HISTORY
  • LIFESTYLE
  • MARKET
  • MOBILE
  • MONEY
  • MOVIE
  • MUSIC
  • Nature
  • News
  • PRESS RELEASE
  • REAL ESTATE
  • Religion
  • SCIENCE
  • Shopping
  • SHOWS
  • SPORTS
  • TECH
  • TRAVEL
FOOD

Spinach Stuffed Salmon Recipe | The Recipe Critic

May 12, 2023
HEALTH

Black Patients Less Likely to Get Treatment for Opioid Overdose

May 12, 2023
HISTORY

Maine Has a State Ballad? Listen to the Song that Was Inspired By the Battle of Gettysburg

May 12, 2023

© 2023 northdakotadigitalnews.com

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • PRESS RELEASE
  • Shop
  • BUSINESS
    • CRYPTO
    • ECONOMY
    • FINANCE
    • MARKET
    • MONEY
  • TECH
    • APPS
    • GADGET
    • MOBILE
    • SCIENCE
  • SOCIAL MEDIA
  • ENTERTAINMENT
    • ARTS & THEATER
    • GAMING
    • GAMBLING
    • MOVIE
    • MUSIC
    • SHOWS
    • SPORTS
  • LIFESTYLE
    • CELEBRITY
    • CULTURE
    • Education
    • FASHION
    • FOOD
    • HEALTH
    • HISTORY
    • Nature
    • Religion
    • Shopping
    • TRAVEL
  • REAL ESTATE
  • Blog
  • Classifieds

© 2023 northdakotadigitalnews.com

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In