"There's
nothing I'm more passionate about than saving lives," says Deborah
Hersman, who was installed as the CEO of the National Safety Council (NSC)
earlier this month after spending ten years as the chairman of the National
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Hersman is hoping that her experience at
the NTSB will carry over into her new job at the NSC, which is a non-profit
group chartered by Congress that focuses on reducing the amount of people who
die unintentionally from severe injuries.
One
of the issues that Hersman wants to focus on is reducing the amount of
unintentional deaths from accidental drug overdoses. Hersman says that of the
38,000 Americans that die each year from accidental drug overdoses, 16,000 die
from overdosing on prescription pain killers. "This is an issue that we
really want to bring to the forefront," Hersman told USA
Today. "I think most people think drug addiction and drug deaths are
about illegal drugs. We're killing more people in prescription situations than
with cocaine and heroin combined."
The
NSC's approach to combatting the country's prescription drug issue includes:
- Ensuring that communication between the state and drug
monitoring systems are done in real-time to ensure that people aren't
receiving multiple prescriptions from different pharmacies.
- Educating doctors to monitor for abuse and dependency.
- Enhancing drug enforcement to crack down on "pill
mills" and pharmacy-shopping.
- Allowing the first on scene to an accidental overdose
(including drug users and family members) access to Naloxene, which is
used to combat opioids.
- Providing immunity or mitigation from prosecution to
those who report overdoses.
Some
of the other areas of focus that the NSC plans to tackle under the direction of
Hersman include teen driving safety, distracted driving, workplace safety and
educating communities about injury prevention.
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