Written by Wendy R. Ellis DrPH (c), MPH; Co-Principal Investigator & Project Director, Building Community Resilience Collaborative; Sumner Redstone Global Center for Prevention & Wellness; George Washington University
Disclaimer: Moving Health Care Upstream is a collaborative effort originally co-led by Nemours Children’s Health System (Nemours) and the Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities at the University of California- Los Angeles (UCLA). The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nemours, UCLA or the Moving Health Care Upstream initiative.
It is truly astounding that we have now reached a point in our nation’s history where opioids kill nearly as many Americans as guns. And the trajectories continue to point upward. We have come to expect, and can even reliably predict, the number of Americans who will die by gun every year — and the rate of consistently high, hyperendemic gun violence in America is alarming. As for opioid deaths, we are not sure if we have reached a peak in the epidemic. These devastating numbers, and the traumas they impose upon families and communities, are uniquely American. [Read more…]