Policy
By Molly Candon, PhD and Oluwatoyin Fadeyibi, PharmD, MPH Between 2014 and 2018 in Philadelphia, the number of children with Medicaid who received an antipsychotic prescription fell by nearly 50%, as we described recently in BMC Psychiatry. The reduction was larger for children who were less than 10 years old and for youth enrolled in […]
Cross-posted from Penn LDI’s Blog Rebecca Stewart, PhD The opioid epidemic is in its fourth and possibly deadliest wave, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and disproportionately killing people of color. Medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD)—including methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone—are effective in combatting the epidemic, but sorely underused. Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disability Services (DBHIDS) recently enacted […]
Molly Candon, PhD The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) overturned their longstanding requirement that physicians must receive approval and undergo training to prescribe buprenorphine, the topline treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). This is an historic shift in policy, and its importance cannot be overstated. Last week, there were fewer than 100,000 waivered providers. Now, over one […]
Sonam Saxena The killing of Walter Wallace brought home, among other things, the desperate need to reform mental health crisis response programs. Too often, calls to the police end in injury or killing of the person in need. The Washington Post has recorded every fatal shooting by police since 2015. One in five killings are […]
Cross-posted from Penn LDI’s Health Policy$ense Robin Ortiz, MD and Laura Sinko, PhD As the country looks to reopen and epidemiologists anticipate future waves of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases, we must address an equally important “pandemic:” the virus’ far-reaching mental health and trauma-related consequences. Whether balancing activities of essential work with exposure risk, bearing witness to suffering […]