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An Indiana man shot and killed himself shortly after gunning down a doctor who refused to prescribe opioid medication to his wife, authorities said this week. The shooting and the suicide unfolded within just hours of each other Wednesday in Mishawaka in northern Indiana, a state that's been gripped by problems with opioid addiction over the past several years. St. Joseph County Prosecutor Ken Cotter told reporters that Michael Jarvis confronted physician Todd Graham for not prescribing an opioid for his wife's chronic pain, but he cautioned that investigators are still determining whether drug addiction played a role in the killing. (Phillips, 7/29)

Chicago now gives at-risk inmates the overdose-reversing drug naloxone upon their release from jail and Los Angeles is poised to follow suit, putting the antidote in as many hands as possible as part of a multifaceted approach to combatting the nation's opioid epidemic. (Babwin, 7/29)

“There is this expectation that fences are going to go up and lights are going to go up and it’s problem solved,” said Jose Benitez, executive director of Prevention Point Philadelphia, the health-care provider and needle-exchange that has worked with the community for years. “That is not the way it is going to happen.” No one really knows where the residents of the encampment along the Conrail tracks are going. Most have already left, some into treatment, several dozen to city-funded housing, others joining small homeless clusters under I-95, more likely breaking into abandoned houses nearby. (Sapatkin, 7/30)

The amount of opioid pain killers prescribed in Franklin County dropped by 41 percent from 2010 to 2015, but doctors still were prescribing the equivalent of a 14-day supply of the drugs for every person in the county, according to federal data. ... Across Ohio, prescriptions for opioids decreased by at least 10 percent in all but 13 of 88 counties. (Viviano, 7/30)