(Daily360.com) The National Institutes of Health (NIH) spent $344 million in an attempt to reduce opioid deaths through intervention, but they did not receive positive results from the 12-month study. The study contained 33 communities to serve as control groups and one community to serve as the intervention group. They implemented educational programs regarding opioid overdoses as well as naloxone distribution.
The researchers found that the death rate was similar in the intervention group as it was in the multiple control groups. They did not see any difference in the number of fentanyl or opioid related deaths after implementing these specific strategies. The strategies were applied to the intervention group between January 2020 and June 2022. The NIH started tracking opioid deaths in July 2021 and didn’t see any meaningful difference between the communities.
Redonna Chandler, the program director, said the lack of meaningful differences in the intervention group does not mean the “evidence based strategies” are not effective. She pointed to multiple areas that they could have improved upon to potentially see positive results. She said they did not enact these strategies in some key locations, including hospitals and jails.
She cited the COVID-19 pandemic that kicked off shortly after they started implementing their opioid intervention strategies. The study did find a rate of 47.2 deaths in the intervention community compared to 51.7 deaths per 100,000 in the control group. That is nearly a 10% decrease, but it is not considered to be statistically significant.
Opioid deaths have increased nearly every year according to NIH statistics from 1999 to 2022. The number of deaths in 2019 was 70,630, which jumped up to 91,799 the following year. In 2022, the number of opioid deaths reached 107,941 in the United States. The pandemic and lockdowns did increase depression and anxiety by about 25%. It is unknown if the large increases of opioid deaths in recent years are related to the pandemic.
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