Can Touch This: police fentanyl exposure training

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 del Pozo, B., Sightes, E., Kang, S. et al. Can touch this: training to correct police officer beliefs about overdose from incidental contact with fentanyl. Health Justice 9, 34 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40352-021-00163-5 

 del Pozo, B., Sightes, E., Goulka, J. et al. Police discretion in encounters with people who use drugs: operationalizing the theory of planned behavior. Harm Reduct J 18, 132 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-021-00583-4 

In 2014, as Vermont's Governor Peter Shumlin delivered a courageous state of the state address about the grip of the opioid overdose crises, doctors were prescribing more opioid analgesics than ever before. Despite requests for more transparency in their prescribing practices, and the existence of a state database that would make prescribing trends available to the public (and give doctors a perspective on where they stood), the practices of the medical profession in Vermont remained opaque. Looking for data, we found an incredibly detailed cache of Medicare prescribing data on a federal website, including for every type of opioid. We analyzed it and found some doctors were prescribing extraordinary amounts of opioid, all the trends were going in the wrong direction, and Vermont was a statistical outlier compared to the rest of New England.