2016 Azbee Awards of Excellence

Category

Online > Enterprise News Story > Northeast

Awarded to

Kristina Fiore, Associate Editor

Entry details

Naloxone for Opioid Overdose: New Questions Arise in 2015

Issue date (if applicable): 12/21/2015
Publication name: MedPage Today
Publishing company: MedPage Today
Website home page: medpagetoday.com

Please describe the publication's mission and readership:

MedPageToday is a trusted and reliable online-only source for clinical and policy coverage that directly affects the lives and practices of healthcare professionals. Physicians and other healthcare professionals may also receive Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits at no cost for participating in MedPage Today hosted educational activities. Our primary audience is upper-level healthcare professionals including physicians (allopathic and osteopathic), nurse practitioners and physician assistants, although our content is open to anyone.

Please describe the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

Naloxone is a drug used in emergency settings to treat opioid drug overdoses, which, as everyone knows, have reached epidemic proportions in much of the United States. First responders like to administer it as a nasal spray, because needles are dangerous both for the emergency worker and for the patient; moreover, a nasal formulation can be given by untrained people such as friends or family members. However, until this year, there was no FDA-approved nasal formulation for the drug. Instead, first responders and others created homemade kits from liquid naloxone intended for injection and atomizers.

But, as MedPage Today reporter Kristina Fiore found in researching the story we are entering, the introduction of an FDA-sanctioned nasal naloxone product has been greeted cautiously, with questions raised about the lack of data on how the product will work in the real world.

The impetus for this story did not come from a press release or interest-group campaign. Kristina had been following developments around naloxone, and opioids in general, for several years. The current story was a follow-up to one she wrote in November 2014. She has developed these stories through her contacts among clinicians and researchers in addiction treatment.

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Entry URL(s), if applicable:
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/PublicHealth/55355

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