Kansas Gets Federal Money To Combat Opioid Abuse

More than $1.4 million in federal grants will help four Kansas health centers enhance their treatment programs for opioid abuse.

In announcing the grants earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said abuse of and addiction to opioids, such as heroin and prescription painkillers, “is a serious and increasing public health problem.”

The four Kansas health centers and their grant amounts:

• Center for Health & Wellness, Wichita, $325,000.
• Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas Inc., Pittsburg, $325,000.
• GraceMed Health Clinic, Wichita, $379,167.
• United Methodist Mexican-American Ministries Inc., now known as Genesis Family Health, Garden City, $379,167.

Krista Postai, CEO of Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas, said the Pittsburg-based center plans to hire seven people, including a peer specialist, a case manager and at least one addiction and mental health counselor for each of the clinics it operates.

It also will increase substance abuse screenings when patients come to the clinics for other care and will coordinate other services, such as mental health treatment, she said.

“We’re going to form a SWAT team, if you will,” she said. “You’ve got to recognize this is a whole person. It’s not just an addiction.”

Wraparound Programs

Five of the physicians who work with the center also are going through training on an outpatient detox method for people addicted to opioids, Postai said.

With medication, “people can function normally while undergoing detox,” she said. “The withdrawal is very painful, and often it’s a barrier to success.”

Opioid abuse cuts across demographic lines because many people were prescribed a pain medication by well-intentioned doctors but became addicted, Postai said.

“This is not the solution, but at least it’s a start,” she said.

Diane Peltier, chief operations officer with the Center for Health & Wellness in Wichita, said it also is focusing on building wraparound programs. For example, the center offers mental health treatment and programs targeting the entire family, so other family members are better able to help their loved one in recovery, she said.

“If you treat just the substance abuse and don’t look at where they’re coming from and what they’re going back to, you may be setting them up for failure,” she said.

Nationwide, HHS will provide $94 million in grants, which it estimated would allow health centers to treat about 124,000 people. Still, that would only be a fraction of those who need help.

In 2013, about 4.5 million people in the United States were estimated to be misusing prescription pain relievers, and 289,000 were believed to be using heroin.

Other options for chronic pain

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance last week for primary care doctors to curb long-term prescriptions for opioids. They don’t apply to cancer or hospice patients.

Doctors should consider prescribing non-drug alternatives, such as physical therapy, or drugs other than opioids for chronic pain, the CDC said.

In 2013, providers wrote 249 million prescriptions for opioids nationwide, or about one for every U.S. adult. Opioids are prescribed for about one-fifth of all U.S. patients seeing a physician for pain.

“The amount of opioids prescribed and sold in the U.S. quadrupled since 1999, but the overall amount of pain reported by Americans hasn’t changed,” a CDC fact sheet said.

About 45% of the 326 drug overdose deaths in Kansas in 2014 were attributed to legal opioids, which is slightly higher than the national rate of around 40%.

The CDC estimated about 40 people die each day from opioid overdoses.

The KHI News Service is an editorially independent initiative of the Kansas Health Institute.