Dear HIFA colleagues,
Thank you for your inputs to the discussion so far. You can review all messages to date on our RSS feed: https://www.hifa.org/rss-feeds/17
This week we turn our attention to public awareness of the impact of opioids.
Q3. Do people understand the health and socioeconomic damage caused by opioid misuse?
Social understanding of the problem influences both prevention and access to treatment.
We invite reflection on the following:
- Do people understand the health and socio-economic harms of opioid misuse? What matters to them? How can they be better informed? How to reduce stigma?
- Does the population recognize the magnitude of the health and socioeconomic damage?
- What are the main social concerns regarding this issue?
- What level of information exists and how can it be improved?
What can be done to raise awareness among the public, and especially young people about the harms of opioid misuse?
A critical aspect is stigma:
- How does it impact the search for help?
- What strategies can reduce it?
COMMENT (NPW): This question is multifaceted. One aspect is to ask whether young people truly understand the risks they are taking when they 'experiment' with opioid drugs. For example, some deaths from opioid overdose happen the very first time that the young person 'tries' the drug, and they may be unaware of the risks they are taking. To what extent do young people receive health education about opioid drugs at school? How is this done and how could it be more effective?
This paper from 2021 makes some interesting observations:
CITATION: Understanding and Supporting Adolescents with an Opioid Use Disorder
Addictions, Drug and Alcohol Institute, University of Washington
https://adai.uw.edu/pubs/pdf/2021AdolescentsOUD.pdf
'Recent and dramatic increases in fentanyl (a very powerful, human made opioid) represents a particularly dangerous situation for adolescents. Why is this opioid so concerning for adolescents?
- By nature of their brain development, adolescents tend to carry beliefs about their own invincibility, also called optimistic bias. In the case of fentanyl, believing that overdose “would never happen to me” is especially dangerous because the stakes are so high: even a small amount of fentanyl can result in death. A recent study of people who use fentanyl bore out this optimistic bias: younger people (18-25) seemed to perceive more immunity to Understanding and Supporting Adolescents with an Opioid Use Disorder 2
fentanyl’s lethality, while people over 35 perceived more risk associated with fentanyl and reported attempting to avoid this substance if possible (Gunn et al., 2021).'...
'Adolescents thinking they are just experimenting with drugs may not understand that people can overdose by snorting or smoking fentanyl, or even taking it orally... Furthermore, lack of experience with opioids means lower tolerance levels, increasing a person’s risk for overdose death.'
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org