Years of coordinated efforts will be required to contain and reverse the harmful societal effects of the country’s ongoing prescription and illicit opioid epidemic, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM). The report, requested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and published July 13, said it is possible to stem the still–escalating epidemic without eliminating access to opioids for patients who suffer from pain and whose providers prescribe the drugs responsibly.

The 18–person committee that authored the report recommended actions the FDA, other federal agencies, state and local governments, and health–related organizations should take – including promoting more judicious prescribing of opioids, expanding access to treatment for opioid–use disorder, preventing more overdose deaths, weighing societal impacts in opioid–related regulatory decisions, and investing in research to better understand the nature of pain and develop nonaddictive alternatives.

The committee was composed of experts involved in different aspects of pain management and opioid–use disorders. Among them was Jose A. Moron–Concepcion, PhD, an associate professor of anesthesiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He studies the emotional component of pain and opioid receptors that modulate the sensory component of pain and the negative emotions associated with it.

Each day, 90 individuals in the United States die from an overdose that involves an opioid. Trends indicate that premature deaths associated with the use of opioids are likely to climb and that opioid overdose and other opioid–related harms will dramatically reduce the quality of life for many people in years to come.

These are the key elements highlighted in the report:

• Changing the culture of prescribing, partially through enhancing education for physicians and the general public.
• Investing in treatment for the millions of individuals with opioid–use disorder and removing impediments to those treatments. Also, improving health–care provider education for opioid–use disorder.
• Preventing overdose deaths, including access to naloxone (also known by its brand name Narcan) and safer injection equipment.
• Weighing societal impacts, not just an individual’s, regarding opioids, such as incorporating public health considerations into the FDA’s current framework for making regulatory decisions regarding opioids.
• Investing in basic research, particularly to better understand the nature of pain and the neurobiology of the intersection between pain and opioid–use disorders. In addition, increasing the investment in developing nonaddictive alternatives to opioids for pain management.