Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. A patient visits a doctor. He suffers from chronic pain. In fact, he’s been suffering for a while, and he’s been receiving painkillers for months. And recently, he’s been upping his dosage and visiting multiple doctors to get enough. But the doctor he’s seeing today doesn’t know this. If she knew about his prescription history, she might engage him in a conversation about his opioid use, suggest alternative pain remedies or even refer him to substance abuse treatment. Instead, she writes him a prescription, and he leaves. Making patients’ opioid prescription histories readily accessible to […]

Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. One in three Hoosier adults is obese, and more than two in three are overweight or obese, costing Indiana an estimated $8.5 billion in 2017– most of which is borne by households and the private sector. A report released today by the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation underscores these findings, showing that obesity has increased dramatically in Marion County and Indiana, becoming one of the most significant preventable causes of morbidity and mortality. The report shows that in Indiana, obesity rose from 20 percent in 1995 to 34 percent in 2017 – a rate that is the 12th highest […]