The past year tested both our resolve and our capacity to work together to protect the physical, emotional and economic health and well-being of all Delawareans. The health of our residents must remain a top priority if we are to prevail. As a professor of public-health nursing and as a physician in emergency care, we applied our “boots on the ground” experience to reach out to vulnerable and at-risk populations and our medical education to develop strategies for equity in access and improved outcomes in health care.
For years, we worked to dispense naloxone kits for those with opioid addiction and to provide training and education in its application. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we worked in the community, administering several thousand COVID-19 tests and then vaccines to at-risk populations. Throughout this experience, we have listened to folks experiencing the pain of social isolation, the grief with the loss of a loved one, the fear of being able to maintain and remain self-sufficient, and the suffering that families experienced. The opioid epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic exacted an unimaginable toll of epic proportions on our health system, our mental and behavioral programs and services, and our front-line responders working to help people.
Compounding the ravaging impact of COVID-19 has been our state’s concerted fight against the opioid epidemic. For persons seeking access to treatment and for persons working to sustain their recovery, connection to substance-use disorder and behavioral health supports from self-help groups to inpatient services has been extremely challenging. People who are suffering with mental health and substance-use disorder have become even more isolated and distanced from the help they need. Over the past year, the U.S. experienced 130 opioid deaths a day and Delaware saw an estimated 446 lives lost to overdose deaths. One person lost to an overdose is one too many. We must prevail in our fight to provide access, treatment and recovery solutions for those who suffer with addiction.
As leaders of the governor’s Behavioral Health Consortium, we continue to work with legislators, statewide providers and community advocates on multiple fronts to prevent challenges, overcome barriers and find innovative solutions that increase access, treatment and recovery options. While we are working to repair the fractures in our system, we must also call upon the federal government to provide assistance and to remove roadblocks to recovery. There is so much more that can be done with alternative care and with federal assistance for expanded alternative services.
One such effort being undertaken is the bipartisan federal Non-Opioids Prevent Addiction in the Nation (NOPAIN) Act. This act, if passed and signed into law, will give us another tool for pain management rather than the overuse of opioids. Passage of the NOPAIN Act will help combat the opioid epidemic and the compounding effects of the COVID-19 crisis. This bill would allow Medicare coverage for non-opioid pain-relief prescriptions that can be effective, while also lowering the risk of addiction. Many opioid addictions begin when pain pills are prescribed after an injury or a medical procedure. Too often, pain pills have become a form of self-medication. Time after time, we heard families share stories of loved ones who succumbed to opioid addiction after using a pain-relief prescription, then evolving into a deadly form of heroin or fentanyl substance-use disorder. There are patients who need opioids to treat their pain; the NOPAIN Act would not prevent them from receiving opioids if recommended by their prescriber. This act, if passed, would allow patients to access medications other than opioids to treat their pain and have Medicare cover the cost of the prescription.
We stand united in our call for you to encourage passage of the NOPAIN Act to help Delawareans avoid substance-use disorder and overdose. As we continue to battle COVID-19, we must also confront the staggering impact of overdose deaths as the result of the opioid epidemic. Together, we can address the largest public-health crisis our nation has ever faced: COVID-19 and the opioid epidemic. Let’s work together on solutions like passage of the NOPAIN Act.
Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, Ph.D., RNC, is a professor of nursing and part of the joint faculty of urban affairs at the University of Delaware. Dr. Sandra M. Gibney is a physician at Newark Urgent Care.
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