Recovery Advocacy News, Issues & Miscellaneous Musings (June 2022)
This was originally published for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation’s monthly Recovery Advocacy Update. If you’d like to receive our advocacy emails, subscribe today.
Curation with occasional commentary by Jeremiah Gardner
📕 READ: The U.S. opioid crisis might soon peak and then start to abate, a new model suggests — but it also projects that overdoses will kill more than half a million more people from 2020 to 2032.
📕 READ: We desperately need a change in the tragic trends of recent years. According to the Trust for America’s Health and Well Being Trust, the U.S. experienced its highest-ever combined rates of deaths due to alcohol, drugs, and suicide during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
📺 WATCH: The hope of recovery never wanes. In this season’s inaugural Hazelden Betty Ford Recovery and Mental Health Awareness Hour, entitled “Recovery: The Greatest Victory of All,” William C. Moyers hosted an inspiring conversation with Hockey Hall-of-Famer Grant Fuhr and three-time Olympic gold medalist Carrie Bates about the private struggles they experienced amid public athletic glory, and the comeback stories sparked by their recovery from addiction.
📕 READ: Stigma is a barrier we must continue to address. More than 70% of Americans surveyed recently by the research firm RIWI Corporation said they believe individuals who use drugs problematically are somewhat, mostly, or entirely responsible for their drug use, and those dependent on drugs have a moderate, low, or no chance at recovery.
📕 READ: Along with our nation, we grieved the killing of 10 African Americans in a horrific hate crime in Buffalo last month, and appreciated this toolkit for coping with racial trauma. Addiction, like racism, is a public health issue and Hazelden Betty Ford stands in solidarity with those advancing racial justice and health equity.
📕 READ: Our trade association, the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers, has joined an effort to protect mental health and substance use disorder coverage. NAATP and others want a federal appeals court to reconsider its recent reversal of a court ruling against the country’s largest managed healthcare insurance company for behavioral health. The original ruling found that UBH routinely denied patients access to covered mental health and addiction treatment based on the application of guidelines that were inconsistent with generally accepted standards of care. By reversing the ruling, the appeals court essentially said the coverage denials were OK. NAATP wants the appeals court to reconsider and ultimately affirm the original ruling against the insurance company.
📺 WATCH: Oregon’s drug decriminalization law, Measure 110, has thus far largely failed to fund addiction treatment services and overdoses have continued to increase.
📕 READ: Check out our Butler Center for Research’s recently published study examining the comparative effectiveness of telehealth substance use treatment vs traditional in-person treatment under real-world conditions. The study — funded by the Addiction Alliance of Georgia (AAG), a joint collaboration between Emory University and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation — found that telehealth is a viable modality for substance use disorder treatment.
📕 READ: States that legalized recreational marijuana use for adults were likelier to see teens partake as well, according to a study published in Addiction.
📕 READ: TV personality Kelly Osbourne is expressing gratitude one year into her recovery. “What a difference a year can make!” she wrote alongside a “Twelve Steps” image on Instagram. “If you would have told me 365 days ago that I would be sober, happy, and about to be a mumma I would have laughed in your face. Life is truly amazing when you do the work. Thank you to everyone that has supported me on this journey. I love you all so much!!!!!!!”
📕 READ: Our friend and former colleague Patrick Krill led a new study finding that lawyers who felt most valued for their professional talent/skill or overall human worth had the best mental and physical health. Lawyers who felt most valued for billable hours, productivity and responsiveness were a distant second in mental and physical health. And lawyers who did not feel valued by their employers or did not receive enough feedback fared the worst in terms of mental and physical health.
📕 READ: More states are decriminalizing fentanyl test strips. “We hope all the states would come to realize the dangers of contamination are so high and that fentanyl test strips empower a person taking drugs to know whether they have fentanyl,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health.
📕 READ: Check out the new home for William White Papers on the Chestnut Health System’s website. As you get used to the new look and location for the revered advocate’s half century of writings and interviews, note two new blog posts: one explaining the website transition, and another in tribute to the late Randolph “Randy” Muck, a touching piece that includes a humble and heartfelt call to action for us all.
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Jeremiah Gardner is director of communications and public affairs for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.
