Opioids

She was in medical school. He was just out of prison. Sarah Ziegenhorn and Andy Beeler’s romance grew out of a shared passion to do more about the country’s drug overdose crisis. Ziegenhorn moved back to her home state of Iowa when she was 26. She had been working in …

ST. LOUIS — Missouri began offering chiropractic care, acupuncture, physical therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy for Medicaid patients in April, the latest state to try an alternative to opioids for those battling chronic pain. Yet only about 500 of the state’s roughly 330,000 adult Medicaid users accessed the program through December, …

Back when Cody Gabbard was shooting heroin, his only significant human contact was with others in the throes of addiction, who only cared to see him when he had drugs. Then he walked into the basement of Fayette County’s courthouse in the eastern Indiana city of Connersville, where two women …

Dr. Angela Gatzke-Plamann didn’t fully grasp her community’s opioid crisis until one desperate patient called on a Friday afternoon in 2016. “He was in complete crisis because he was admitting to me that he had lost control of his use of opioids,” recalled Gatzke-Plamann. The patient had used opioids for …

Blake Farmer, Nashville Public Radio Babies born to mothers who used opioids during pregnancy represent one of the most distressing legacies of an opioid epidemic that has claimed almost 400,000 lives and ravaged communities. In fact, many of the ongoing lawsuits filed against drug companies refer to these babies, fighting through withdrawal …

KHN correspondent Shefali Luthra reported this article from Germany as a 2019 Arthur F. Burns Fellow. HAMBURG, Germany ― In 2016, 10 times as many Americans as Germans died as a result of drug overdoses, mostly opiates. Three times as many Americans as Germans experienced opioid addiction. Even as the …

This story is part of a partnership that includes WHYY, NPR and Kaiser Health News. This story can be republished for free (details). Philadelphia could become the first U.S. city to offer opioid users a place to inject drugs under medical supervision. But lawyers for the Trump administration are trying …

Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen on SoundCloud. Former Vice President Joe Biden has said if he’s elected president he would build on the Affordable Care Act rather than move to a whole new health care system, such as the “Medicare for All” plan supported by some of …

A green van was parked on the edge of downtown Miami, on a corner shadowed by overpasses. The vehicle serves as a mobile health clinic and syringe exchange, where people who inject drugs like heroin and fentanyl could swap dirty needles for fresh ones. One of the clinic’s regular visitors, …

In the 25 years since she snorted her first line of meth at a club in San Francisco, Kim has redefined “normal” so many times. At first, she said, it seemed like meth brought her back to her true self — the person she was before her parents divorced, and …