Tammy Wincup

A State of Emergency: Integrative Approaches to Addiction and the Opioid Epidemic

David Beier, Jerome Adams, Terry McAuliffe, Lori McFarling, Tom Moriarty, Nora Volkow, Tammy Wincup

A federal and state coalition deployed 14,000 officials alongside private sector partners like CVS and Discovery Education to address the opioid crisis through prevention economics, educational outreach, and prescription limits that reduced Virginia's over-prescriptions by one-third. Initiatives including a new data-sharing compact among 46 governors and the Surgeon General's social capital report aim to leverage granular prescription analytics and community resilience to cut costs associated with incarceration and unemployment. These coordinated efforts target the multifactorial nature of the epidemic by embedding science-based prevention in classrooms, enforcing seven-day prescription caps, and expanding safe disposal programs to recover from 64,000 overdose deaths recorded in 2016.