• Health services research · Apr 2019

    Good Samaritan harm reduction policy and drug overdose deaths.

    • Danielle N Atkins, Christine Piette Durrance, and Yuna Kim.
    • College of Community Innovation and Education, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida.
    • Health Serv Res. 2019 Apr 1; 54 (2): 407-416.

    ObjectiveTo examine the effects of a harm reduction policy, specifically Good Samaritan (GS) policy, on overdose deaths.Data Sources/Study SettingSecondary data from multiple cause of death, mortality records paired with state harm reduction and substance use prevention policy.Study DesignWe estimate fixed effects Poisson count models to model the effect of GS policy on overdose deaths for all, prescription, and illicit drugs, controlled substances, and opioids, while controlling for other harm reduction and substance use prevention policies.Data Collection/Extraction MethodsWe merge secondary data sources by state and year between 1999 and 2016.Principal FindingsWe fail to identify a statistically significant effect of GS policy in reducing overdose deaths broadly.ConclusionsWhile we are unable to identify an effect of GS policy on overdose deaths, GS policy may have important effects on first-stage outcomes not investigated in this paper. Given recent state policy changes and rapid increase in many categories of overdose deaths, additional research should continue to examine the implementation and effects of harm reduction policy specifically and substance use prevention policy broadly.© Health Research and Educational Trust.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…