Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Tobacco and opioids continue to claim Hoosier lives. Last year in Indiana, more than 1,700 died from a drug overdose, an increase of 13 percent over 2016. And each year, more than 11,000 people die in Indiana due to smoking cigarettes. Addressing these two public health issues requires collaboration across sectors. This includes employers. Aside from inflicting harm on Indiana residents, tobacco use and opioid misuse cost employers, too. It’s estimated that, each year, tobacco costs the state $7.6 billion and opioids cost an additional $1.5 billion. Employers pay a share of this through higher […]

Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Opioid addiction inflicts damage on Hoosiers in a number of ways. Abuse of prescription opioids and heroin use can lead to deaths by overdose, and they can cause neonatal abstinence syndrome in children of mothers who misuse opioids. When injected, they can also spread HIV and Hepatitis C through needle-sharing. The recent HIV outbreak in Scott County, Indiana, where the number of new HIV infections more than quadrupled over the course of a few months, provides the most salient example. But the problem is present whenever individuals are sharing needles. It is estimated that 50 […]