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Manchin seeks change to addiction treatments

MORGANTOWN — Sen. Joe Manchin said Monday he wants West Virginia to become known in the nation for “appreciable change” in its approach to treating drug addiction.

Noting the Mountain State has the nation’s highest rate of drug overdose and mortality, Manchin, D-W.Va., said, “Any appreciable change here is going to be noticed around the country.”

Manchin and Dr. Clay Marsh, vice president and executive dean of West Virginia University Health Sciences, participated in a roundtable discussion and live webcast on the WVU campus to address the university’s response to the opioid crisis. During the session, three panels of WVU faculty and students discussed the opioid crisis from the perspective of education, treatment and research.

“We’ve got a serious problem. I think we’ve been targeted as a state, marketed as a state,” Manchin said, referring to wholesale shipments of pain pills to West Virginia and overprescribing of opioids.

Manchin said 61,000 West Virginians reportedly used opioids for non-medical purposes in 2014.

Marc W. Haut, chair of WVU’s Department of Behavioral Medicine, said more people have to be trained to provide treatment for drug addiction and better systems must be developed for delivering treatment.

James Berry, an associate professor of behavioral medicine, said stigma toward people struggling with addiction “seems to be waning to some degree,” but stigma remains against medically assisted treatment. He argued that Suboxone, when used as part of medically assisted treatment “actually works” by keeping people alive longer, decreasing criminality and reducing the cost of health care.

“We have a treatment that works. We’re trying to take away the stigma,” Berry said. “It’s time to support what actually works. We’re using (Suboxone) as a way to connect people with treatment that they would not be able to access otherwise.”

The West Virginia model of treatment — recognized nationally — involves 90 minutes of treatment a week, with pill counts, drug screens and required meeting attendance, Berry said. He explained Suboxone is a partial opioid medication and is unlikely to lead to overdose, while methadone is a full opioid medication on which people “can overdose pretty easily.”

Robert Bossarte, director of WVU’s Injury Control Research Center, said research is being done to bridge gaps in recognizing and treating opioid disorders and other adversities in life, gaps between resources and challenges and gaps in getting evidence-based programs into the field.

Judith Feinberg, a professor of behavioral medicine and psychiatry, said research needs to be done on collateral damage of the opioid epidemic. For infectious complications such as hepatitis C and hepatitis B, she said “treatment is prevention.”

Research also is needed to determine how quickly physicians are hearing and heeding the message of opioid-prescribing guidelines, Feinberg said.

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