Opioid crisis

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is addressing the opioid epidemic in communities throughout the U.S. Learn how on our new opioids webpage.

COMING SOON! The rural communities opioid response funding opportunity!

The Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) plans to award up to 75 grants to rural communities as part of a new Rural Communities Opioid Response (Planning) (RCORP) initiative in FY 18.

Successful awardees will receive up to $200,000 for one year to develop plans to implement opioid use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery interventions designed to reduce opioid overdoses among rural populations.

Learn more about this funding opportunity.

Special edition: The opioid epidemic

Last week we produced a special edition of the HRSA Primary Health Care Digest focused exclusively on helping health centers on the frontlines of the opioid epidemic. It links to the brand new HRSA opioid webpage and dozens of other resources. It includes a letter from the Health Center Program’s Chief Medical Officer and promising practices from health centers across the nation. If you missed it, read it now.

2018 National Ryan White Conference on HIV Care & Treatment – Abstract submission

The April 30th deadline for submitting abstracts for HRSA’s HIV/AIDS Bureau’s 2018 National Ryan White Conference on HIV Care and Treatment is quickly approaching. The conference will take place December 11-14, 2018, at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, MD. This year’s theme is Catalyzing Success: Advancing Innovation. Leveraging Data. Ending the HIV Epidemic.

To submit an abstract for a workshop or poster presentation, visithttps://ryanwhite2018.hrsa.gov. On the website, you can learn more about the six conference tracks and also register for the conference. To stay on top of all 2018 National Ryan White Conference news and important updates, please follow on Twitter @RyanWhiteConf.

Hidden in plain sight

The child was in bad shape when she walked into Asian Health Services in Oakland, California: high fever, elevated heart rate, rashes all over her body, swollen joints. She had lost 30 pounds in the preceding three months.

She was 15 years old.

Many health providers treat victims of human trafficking without ever recognizing that the patient is in trouble, studies suggest. But more than half of victims surveyed report being treated in an emergency department at some point during their ordeal; more than two of every five are seen by a primary care practitioner; one in four, by a dentist.

Learn how health centers are helping victims of human trafficking.

Human trafficking & public health – New SOAR online training

The National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center (NHTTAC) and Postgraduate Institute, in collaboration with federal partners, recently launched a new series of CE/CME training modules called SOAR Online. The training is FREE and designed to educate health care providers, social workers, public health professionals, and behavioral health professionals on how to identify, treat, and respond appropriately to individuals who are at risk or who have been trafficked.

Visit the SOAR Online page for full CE/CME information and register for SOAR Online.

Clinician, do no harm

Clinicians and officials with Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) – which insures about one in three Americans – suspect that the volume and potency of medications ordered by health professionals is a primary driver of the national opioid crisis. The finding comes amid new research that suggests the addictive painkillers may be no more effective for certain patients than traditional anti-inflammatory drugs.

Among a litany of striking findings, the corporate giant estimates that 1.6 percent of the 5 million mostly adolescent patients who have wisdom teeth extracted annually, for example, get hooked on improperly prescribed pills.

That works out to about 80,000 young people a year.

Read about the role of clinicians and safe prescribing practices.

CDC’s STEADI Initiative helps providers reduce falls among older patients

Fall among Older Adults are costly and preventable

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that in 2015, total medical costs to treat older adult falls exceeded $50 billion, of which Medicare and Medicaid spent about $38 billion. With the aging of the U.S. population, both the number of fall injuries and the resulting expenditures are expected to increase substantially unless more is done to prevent falls. Clinical prevention efforts, like CDC’s STEADI Initiative, equip health care providers with the tools and resources needed to reduce falls among their older patients.

HRSA’s Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP) has found the STEADI Initiative to be useful with its training and education of both patients and health care professionals. HRSA grantees use the CDC-funded STEADI materials for training and education programs such as:

Providing education to patients who have fallen;
Training interprofessional healthcare teams to assess mobility and determine fall risk and environmental safety concerns of older adults living at home;
Providing classroom training for an Apprenticeship Training program where prospective Medical Assistants learn how to perform physical screenings;
Conducting geriatric screenings in the community, using STEADI assessments, to identify older adults at-risk of falls; and
Placing CDC STEADI training materials in their electronic medical record as part of the Annual Wellness Visit education.

HRSA seeks nominations for members for a national advisory council

HRSA is requesting nominations for the National Advisory Council on the National Health Service Corps. Contact Diane Fabiyi-King, Designated Federal Official, at (301) 443-3609 or by email at dfabiyi-king@hrsa.gov for more information regarding necessary experience and the nomination process.