Nonprofit creates free online course to tackle Pennsylvania’s opioid crisis

The Rothman Opioid Foundation for Opioid Research & Education is offering a free online curriculum that will aid current and future prescribers to fight opioid addiction across Pennsylvania and the Appalachian region.

Launched in 2019, the Philadelphia nonprofit is dedicated to raising awareness of the risks and benefits of opioids, while educating physicians, patients, and policymakers on safe opioid use. The organization also supports research and education to use alternative pain strategies to decrease opioid use.

Dr. Asif Ilyas, president of the Rothman Opioid Foundation, said they’re using a three-year grant of nearly $2 million dollars from the federal Appalachian Region Commission, along with support from the Pennsylvania General Assembly, to create the free online curriculum.

The four to eight-hour course will be offered to 75 allied healthcare professional training programs, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants, at collegiate institutions across Pennsylvania, and soon, the broader Appalachian Region.

Ilyas is also recommending senior medical students take the course.

“The goal is to educate our future prescribers on smart evidence-based opioid prescribing strategies,” he said. “They’re the future, the more educated they are, the better we’re all going to be.”

Through the curriculum, participants will be educated on opioid prescribing guidelines and indications for various conditions, pain management alternatives to opioids, detecting potential opioid abuse, and intervention strategies.

The educational programs will also consist of online webinar series, certifying course training, and in-person events when feasible.

Ilyas said it took two years for the curriculum to be developed, many people were involved in its creation, including Dr. Jenna Adadlbert, an orthopaedic surgery resident at the University of Miami, and the Jefferson School of Population Health.

In his 15 years of practice in the Philly area and as professor of orthopedics at Jefferson, Ilyas has learned just how devastating the opioid crisis has been in our region.

“The opioid crisis, broadly in Pennsylvania, is an ongoing problem,” said Ilyas. “It really started at around 1999-2000 where we started to see a spike in a combination of both opioid prescribing and subsequently opioid related deaths.”

But the epidemic has impacted the entire country, he said. No area has been spared.

“Metropolitan, suburban, rural, all sorts of patient age groups and demographics, and ethnic groups are all involved in this unfortunately to the point now that the CDC estimates that 130 Americans die from opiate related deaths every single day,” said Ilyas.

The United States is leading the crisis worldwide, as the Minnesota Department of Health reported Americans consume 80 percent of the world’s oral opioid production compared to the rest of the world.

“It’s a huge problem, I started doing some research on the topic and I came to realize that the problem is multifactorial,” said Ilyas. He shared four influences on the opioid crisis:

• Pharmaceutical advertising to physicians and to patients on aggressive use of opioids to manage pain.
• Aggressive opiate overprescribing by physicians, resulting in overconsumption by patients and subsequently addiction and abuse and related problems.
• Expectation by society to have aggressive pain management for minimal pain experience.
• The ongoing drug problem in terms of illegal drug smuggling, production, and drug abuse across the border and coming into America.

Allied health professionals and med school students can sign up to take the online course. Click here to take the course and access additional details on the Opioids & Pain Management course.

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