Letter to Secretary Burwell - Urge to Continue Work to Address Opioid Epidemic

Letter

Dear Secretary Burwell:

We are writing because of our shared, collective concern about the continued toll of the opioid addiction and overdose epidemic in our states.

Across the country, deaths from overdose rates are at crisis levels and continuing to rise. Tragically, deaths have been at a critical level for years and remain so in spite of bold steps taken at the local, state, regional, and national level.

The toll has been particularly heavy in our region of New England. We believe one key area in which additional steps can have a strong impact is increasing education about how prescribing practices impact addiction. As you know, the use and misuse of prescription pain relievers are often the initial catalyst to addiction and then overdose.

To that end, we respectfully make the following proposals:

Convene a Cross-Department Working Group

We urge you to convene a Cross-Department Working Group to identify ways to restore the balance in pain management, expand prescriber education, reduce prescriptions for opioid pain killers, and examine alternative non-opioid approaches in treating patients.

We would urge this group, under your leadership, to develop best practices for pain management and prescribing pain medication, and include senior representatives of relevant federal agencies, and other federal, local, and private sector partners as necessary as a high level of cross-departmental cooperation and coordination will be required to adequately address this issue.

Give Prescribers the Tools to Change Practice

We believe a "Prescriber Pain Relief Toolkit" could make a major impact in helping to change prescribing practices. Such a toolkit could help practitioners modify their care practice procedures in ways that meet the needs of their patients while reducing the risks of addiction. This toolkit would assist physicians in accurately assessing pain levels, confer on method of pain management, describe minimum dosage and frequency and describe follow up protocols to determine pain tolerance & management.

Support the Development of Alternative Pain Management

We believe there is a great need for more tested and proven methods to effectively alleviate pain in ways that do not put patients, or those with access medications, at risk of addiction and overdose, and that investing in additional research is vital to developing alternative pain management techniques.

Research should explore the full range of therapies and treatment to reduce pain, including the role of physical therapy, occupational therapy, mindfulness training, modification training, adapted use of work/living settings, counseling and more -- both integrated with medication-based treatment and as alternatives to opioid based medication.

Funding, promoting, and sharing such research should be a top priority for the working group referenced above. By aligning goals across departments, the research generated by this effort will have a broader impact on changing the behavior and practice of healthcare professionals.

It is critically important to unite and coordinate the work, expertise, and regulatory authority of those responsible for the rise in addiction and overdose with those responsible for guiding, directing, and evaluating medical practice.

We applaud you for the leadership and the proactive actions you have taken to date on this critically important issue. We do, however, believe more needs to be done and feel that adopting the proposals outlined above will have a significant, immediate, and long-term positive impact on stemming addiction and overdose.

We are ready to assist you and your office in way to further these ideas and to advance all of your work on this important challenge.

Sincerely,

James P. McGovern
Elizabeth H. Esty
David N. Cicilline
Ann McLane Kuster
Rosa DeLauro
Joe Courtney
John B. Larson
James A. Himes
Frank C. Guinta
Chellie Pingree
Richard E. Neal
Seth Moulton
James R. Langevin

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