Free Download: Opioid Overdose Prevention Toolkit
The SAMHSA Opioid Overdose Prevention Toolkit - 2018 equips health care providers, communities, and local governments with material to develop practices and policies to help prevent opioid-related overdoses and deaths. It addresses issues for health care providers, first responders, treatment providers, and those recovering from opioid overdose.
Opioid overdose is a major public health problem. In 2014, 28,647 of drug overdose deaths is the US alone involved some type of opioid, including heroin. 1,2 Overdose involves both men and women of all ages, ethnicities, and demographic and economic characteristics, and involves both illicit opioids such as heroin and, increasingly, prescription opioid analgesics such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, fentanyl, and methadone. Physicians and other health care providers can make a major contribution toward reducing the toll of opioid overdose through the care they take in prescribing opioid analgesics and monitoring patients’ response, as well as through their acuity in identifying and effectively addressing opioid overdose.