Value Institute

This is what it takes to fight opioid addiction

November 30, 2017

Drug overdoses claimed 64,000 American lives in 2016 — more lives than the AIDS epidemic at its height and up 22 percent from just a year before. In Delaware, 308 people died from overdoses in 2016, compared to 228 in the previous year. “The opioid epidemic is a major catastrophe hitting our community,” said Terry Horton, M.D., FACP, FASAM, chief of the Division of Addiction Medicine and associate physician leader of the Behavioral Health Service Line at Christiana Care. Heartbreaking stories of people who became addicted to prescription painkillers and then turned to cheaper heroin are all too common across the nation and in our local community. For all its tragedy, the national crisis also is awakening a greater understanding of addiction — and the strategies that are effective in addressing it. Read more