aren’t used to using opioids, whose bodies aren’t tolerant to those opioid drugs.”
Larochelle’s team gathered data for this study as part of the Helping to End Addiction Long-Term Communities Study, a federally funded effort to stem OD deaths in 67 communities hard-hit by the opioid crisis.
Those communities are in Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio. The project has “a goal of reducing opioid overdose deaths by 40% in three years,” according to Larochelle.
Overall, opioid OD death rates were flat in the targeted communities between 2018 and 2019, researchers reported Sept. 9 in the American Journal of Public Health.
But looking more closely, researchers found a 38% increase in opioid overdose deaths among Black people.
Actions that have helped reduce the flood of OD deaths among other racial and ethnic groups don’t appear to be having the same impact on Black Americans, Larochelle shares.
He notes that laws have been passed to curb the illicit use of prescription opioid painkillers; communities have been educated on ways to treat overdoses and armed with the OD reversal drug naloxone, and medications have been made more widely available to treat people addicted to opioids.
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“Unfortunately, they’ve been delivered in ways mirroring structural inequalities throughout our health care and public health systems,” with the benefits mainly going to white people, Larochelle says.
Other matters that hamper Black Americans’ access to health care likely play a role here as well, Stoller adds. These include a lack of access to health care and affordable health insurance, no available child care, problems finding transportation to and from treatment, as well as homelessness.
“These are all just some of a host of other barriers that can limit the effectiveness of what we’re trying to do to make a dent” in opioid OD deaths among Black Americans, Stoller shares.
“Substance use disorders are very complex, in terms of how they’re formed and sustained,” he adds. “We need to address the sustaining factors that limit treatment access and treatment effectiveness for Black people.”
Fentanyl also could be contributing to OD deaths among Black Americans,