Do No Harm Week Recap

Greetings from the road! The Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey, along with our partners at the Drug Enforcement Administration – New Jersey Division, have embarked on the Do No Harm symposium 2014 tour with the kick-off event, Tuesday, at Morristown Medical Center in Morristown, NJ. This first event kicked off a very powerful week of dialogue about the prescription drug abuse epidemic gripping our state. It was followed by equally energized and engaging conversations at Community Medical Center in Toms River, Ocean County, and Cooper University Medical School at Rowan University, Camden, Camden County.

Do No Harm is designed to be a gathering of experts from law enforcement, the medical community, and treatment and prevention professionals to discuss solutions on best practices and policies aimed at stopping prescription drug abuse. We are fortunate enough to have national experts comment on the wide scope of the issue, as well as state and local officials who help bring the issue home. We have doctors schooled in the fields of emergency medicine and pain management who are offering their best practices and their observations from the front lines of this devastating issue. And we are honored by the mothers who shared their own personal stories on how opioid abuse impacted their families.

But most of all, we are grateful for the doctors and medical professionals who attended this week’s symposium and are planning on attending future programs. Their questions and comments challenged our panelists and opened the door for real headway to be made in the prescription drug abuse crisis. Our sincere hope is that every doctor who attended takes the things they learned to heart, implements them in their own practice, and shares this important information with their colleagues.

To commemorate the symposiums this week, Governor Chris Christie designated the week of June 9th - 13th as Opioid Abuse Awareness Week.

The end of the road in many cases of prescription drug abuse is heroin addiction, as US Attorney Paul Fishman pointed out in his opening remarks at Tuesday’s symposium. With the help of our partners in law enforcement, the medical community, and treatment and prevention professionals, we can make it so this unfortunate path is one no more of our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and family and friends, take any longer.

 

 

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