TORONTO — Preliminary results of a project to educate practitioners about naloxone use showed it improved their knowledge of the opioid antagonist and significantly increased naloxone distribution to patients at a Los Angeles clinic.
“The opioid crisis has affected so many Americans,” Alexis M. Burnette, MD, a physician at Los Angeles General Medical Center, told Healio.
Burnette presented early results from the project at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting. The abstract was part of the meeting’s new “work in progress” category, for research that is still underway.
According to Burnette and colleagues, more than 106,000 people died of a drug-related overdose in 2021. The opioid crisis has mainly affected adults, but deaths involving opioid use are increasing among all ages, they noted.
A study published in 2022 showed that fentanyl-involved deaths increased 182% among people aged 10 to 19 years from 2019 to 2021.
For their project, Burnette and colleagues dispersed a questionnaire to providers at a violence intervention program to evaluate their comfort and previous experience with prescribing naloxone and offered additional training on the topic to any provider who wanted it.
Watch the video above to hear about the preliminary results.
Reference:
Burnette AM, et al. WIP 9: Improving naloxone distribution and access in high-risk adolescents through provider education. Presented at: Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting; May 2-6, 2024; Toronto
