The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated challenges should cause us to redouble community efforts to address both unfamiliar and ongoing problems related to SUD in Marion County.

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 […]