When the pandemic hit last March, the U.S. was facing another major public health crisis — the opioid epidemic. Between COVID-19 lockdowns and economic devastation, overdose deaths soared. Experts predict that around 90,000 people died of a drug overdose in 2020, setting a sobering record of the highest number of deaths and largest increase in one year.
On the latest episode of The Dose, we discuss why drug deaths are rising and how policymakers can fix the problem with Brendan Saloner, a professor of Health Policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and Jesse Baumgartner, a research associate at the Commonwealth Fund.