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As someone who’s spent over a decade addressing challenges faced by people with a substance use disorder, I’ve heard many stories of triumph and heartbreak that occur within the long path to recovery. This summer, my concerns have focused on a question that too few are asking: What will happen to kids deeply impacted by this epidemic? That was the main point of discussion at a panel I moderated in June, “Caring for the Youngest Victims of our Nation’s Opioid Crisis.” One panelist, Lincoln, New Hampshire Police Chief Ted Smith, recounted what it’s like to go into a home to find children neglected and endangered as their parents struggled with drug abuse. (Former Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.), 8/1)

Concerns about the current epidemic of opioid- related deaths have focused attention on physician prescribing patterns and deficiencies in the training of the clinical workforce. Corresponding attention to the lack of access to medications for addiction treatment, primarily buprenorphine and methadone, has generated increased funding for both treatment and post-graduate clinician education and a broad range of new legislative proposals. ...The goal to increase access to evidenced-based treatment is critical. ...However, some of the solutions proposed are ill-considered and risk serious unintended consequences. (John A. Renner, 8/1)

It’s sobering to take in the magnitude: Over 63,600 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016 — more than died in car crashes or of breast cancer; more than were killed in the entire Vietnam War. And deaths specifically from opioids trafficked from overseas more than doubled from 2015 to 2016. Experts predict that nearly 500,000 Americans could lose their lives to opioids over the next decade. (Liz Schrayer, 8/2)

Americans must never forget the mass cruelty inflicted on refugee children by the U.S. government, no matter how fast and fraudulently President Donald Trump tweets out distractions. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and others who decreed and then lamely tried to justify government-sanctioned child abuse will move on with barely a ripple of conscience, if that. Their young victims, on the other hand, will be burdened, perhaps for life, by the trauma of being ripped, in some cases literally, from the arms of their parents. (8/1)

Our country has been consumed with reports about the separation of children from their families at the nation’s border. Children, as young as toddlers —and even babies, were separated from their parents because of the so-called “zero tolerance” illegal immigration policy enacted by the U.S. Department of Justice. ...It appeared that our country had failed to adhere to its paramount standards of decency and morality. This is an especially sensitive matter for the Cuban-American community, which had so many of its sons and daughters emigrate to the United States as unaccompanied minors on the Pedro Pan freedom flights. Our community knows firsthand the lasting emotional scars that can result from even a temporary separation from one’s family. We lived it — and still do. (Jorge Piedra, 8/1)

From conception through birth, the first nine months of existence predict an astonishing percentage of the rest of a person’s life — both male and female. By better understanding the many factors associated with both normal and complicated pregnancies, we can anticipate a wide range of conditions that impact human health: heart disease; genetic or metabolic disorders; physical, mental and emotional development. Better understanding can lead to early interventions that are, quite literally, life-changing. So again, what does it take to get there? It’s no secret that women’s health care traditionally attracts less funding. We think of it as specialized, a political movement, a feminist cause. But to view women’s health care in these terms is to miss the bigger picture. When we fail to invest here, it’s humanity that suffers, not just women. (Carrie Coghill, 8/1)

Omar Paisley, 17, died in juvenile detention from a burst appendix. Elord Revolte, also 17, died in juvenile detention, too — from internal bleeding. What really killed them, however, was the entrenched neglect and cruelty of Florida’s juvenile justice system. Wednesday, a Miami-Dade grand jury credited the Miami Herald for its stomach-churning series “Fight Club” for throwing a spotlight on the system. The gripping stories “detailed a pattern of conduct wherein guards within the juvenile detention facility created intolerable conditions and behavior by bribing certain juveniles with fast food, including pastry ‘honeybuns’, in order for those teens to discipline other juveniles within the facility,” grand jurors wrote. (8/2)

Nothing has more to do with how well nursing homes treat their residents than staffing. Preventing falls and bedsores, properly administering medication, helping patients eat and maintain their dignity — all depend on having enough nurses and aides. State and federal governments have resisted setting minimum staffing levels, but the public recently gained more accurate information about patient-staff ratios, thanks to a provision of the Affordable Care Act. The news is not good. (7/31)