President Bill Clinton will visit the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health tomorrow to open an event that will focus on prescription drug abuse.
Image caption: Bill Clinton
The town hall meeting, titled "Prescription Drug Abuse: Evidence Informing Action," will be co-hosted by the Clinton Health Matters Initiative and the School of Public Health. It begins at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the School of Public Health's Sommer Hall in East Baltimore and is open to registered attendees only. Registration reached capacity on Friday afternoon, shortly after the event was announced, and is now closed.
President Clinton's remarks will come on the one-year anniversary of his announcing the Clinton Foundation's intent to address prescription drug misuse. This event will focus on the public health approach to comprehensive solutions to the prescription drug abuse epidemic.
Prescription drug abuse is the nation's fastest-growing drug problem, according to figures published by the Clinton Health Matters Initiative. Overdoses involving prescription painkillers now kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined, and prescription drug misuse is the third leading cause of accidental deaths. In the last 20 years, the consumption of prescription stimulants increased from 5 million to 45 million.
The event includes a panel discussion moderated by Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist, best-selling author, and the sister of Johns Hopkins astrophysicist and Nobel laureate Adam Riess.
The panel of experts includes Amy Klobuchar, U.S. senator from Minnesota; Margaret A. Hamburg, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; former U.S. congressman Patrick Kennedy; and Douglas Hough, a Johns Hopkins behavioral economist.
Michael J. Klag, dean of the School of Public Health, and Patricia Davidson, dean of the School of Nursing, will also give brief remarks, as will Caleb Alexander, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness, and Andrea Gielen, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy.
The event will be broadcast live online at www.jhsph.edu. The broadcast will not be viewable on mobile devices and tablets.
Posted in Health
Tagged drugs, prescription drugs
