U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra marked the one-year anniversary of HHS's Overdose Prevention Strategy by announcing the progress the nation has made since the release of the Strategy, showing expanded treatment capacity, lives saved from overdose, and commitment to long-term recovery supports. Secretary Becerra also announced a new action to build on this groundbreaking progress by expanding access to the overdose-reversing drug naloxone. Read the full article
Recent reports highlighted racial and ethnic differences in U.S. drug overdose deaths from 1999 to 2020. Overdose deaths increased 37.2% from February 2020 to August 2021 and were predominantly associated with synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily fentanyl or analogs) and methamphetamine. Yet data are lacking regarding racial and ethnic disparities in overdose death rates within specific sex-age combinations before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (since March 2020). Read the full article