Good morning! ☀️

This week, Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, a 42-year-old food Lebanese delivery driver, held up to 10 people hostage inside a bank in Beirut, Lebanon. He needed to withdraw his savings to pay for his father’s medical bills, but was unable to do so because of the government’s policy which limits withdrawls of foreign currencies.

The incident ended without any injuries, and Hussein was arrested after surrendering in exchange for what his lawyer said was $35,000 of his money. Throughout this, people praised Hussein in social media posts, while some bystanders chanted, "Down with the rule of the banks!"

Question: Have drug overdose deaths increased or decreased since 1999?

News

Supervised Drug Injection Sites

Earlier this year, the 1st official safe injection site in the U.S. opened up in New York City. The safe injection site was created to help prevent deaths by drug overdoses and reduce the risk of Hepatitis C and HIV associated with drug use by providing a hygenic environment where people are able to take illicit drugs.

Although these facilities are highly contested, with the opposition to the movement arguing that these programs “normalize illegal behavior”, they are responses to the opioid overdose epidemic that has scourged the United States. These facilities have also been opened outside of the U.S. in cities such as Vancouver and Barcelona. Switzerland was the first country to open a supervised injectioon site in 1986.

Since the opening of the first safe injection facility in New York City, other states including California have pushed to pass legislation that would open safe injection sites. A recent bill in California would “authorize these overdose prevention pilot programs in Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, which would operate through Jan. 1, 2028”.

Some research on supervised injection sites has been published. For example, an article published in May of 2022 in the journal American Family Physician argues that “supervised injection sites effectively reduce overdose deaths, and many of the fears about them are unfounded.” The study outlines previous studies, including one which “found a 26% net reduction in overdose deaths in the area surrounding a supervised injection site in Vancouver, Canada, compared with the rest of the city” and another one which stated that a “supervised injection site in Barcelona, Spain, was associated with a 50% reduction in overdose mortality from 1991 to 2008”.

Other social work-related news

• This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finalized a rule that would enable some hearing aids to be bought over the counter (as oppossed to having to go through an audiologist). The new rules will apply only to hearing aids for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss, and will not affect children or those who require higher-powered devices
  

• Kaiser Permanente mental health workers across Northern California continue to strike for close to a week in their fight for increased staffing and wages

Reads on research

• Katherine Marcal, an assistant professor in the UNLV School of Social Work, conducted a research study which found that “families who struggle to afford housing display increased child maltreatment, which can lead to child welfare and criminal justice involvement, ongoing maternal and child trauma, and strain on the public child-serving system”.
  

• For the past seven years, associate professor of biomedical engineering Rose Faghih has developed technology that measures certain brain activity directly connected to a person’s emotional state — specifically electrodermal activity (EDA), through the skin. Faghih hopes to eventually create a device that can monitor the wearer’s mental state and “offer nudges” to help them go back to a more neutral state of mind when under stress.

Reads on policy

• “The Biden administration announced new plans Thursday that should make it a lot easier for millions of kids to get access to mental and physical health services at school. The announcement specifically impacts the tens of millions of children who get their health care through Medicaid, but all school age children will benefit from the change because the new guidance makes it clear that schools can use Medicaid dollars to hire additional school counselors, nurses and social workers who could treat all students.”

Tech, social work, and cool opportunities 😎

• Andreessen Horowitz, a famous venture capital firm, gave Adam Neumann (Co-Founder of WeWork) $350 Million to solve the housing crisis. That’s ironic given that Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, opposed affordable multifamily housing in his town
  

• The Visting Room Project - A multi-media storytelling project documenting the experiences of people serving life without parole sentences
  

• An interesting look into the “multi-billion dollar for-profit bail industry”, which “extracts its billions directly from families who are unable to afford the full amount of the cash amount required by a judge for a loved one’s release”
  

• Coach Support Manager at MindRight Health, a company making mental health care radically accessible and inclusive of underserved communities
  

• Senior Clinical Lead at Big Health, a company which creates digital therapeutics for mental health
  

• Chief of Staff at Bamboo Health, a cloud-based care coordination software and analytics solutions focused on patients with complex needs

Answer: Unfortunately, drug overdose deaths have quadrupled since 1999. This outrageous increase was a result of three “waves”: The prescribing of opioids in the 1990s, the increase in overdose deaths by heroin in the 2010s, and the fentanyl wave beginning in 2013.