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Bills Address Infectious Diseases Impacts of the Opioid Crisis

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05/09/2018

The Eliminating Opioid-Related Infectious Disease Act and the Substance Use Disorder Loan Repayment Act under consideration by the House Energy and Commerce Committee today recognize that responses to the national opioid epidemic must include responses to its accompanying public and individual health threats. The Infectious Diseases Society of America, the HIV Medicine Association, and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society support the committee’s comprehensive approach to the opioid crisis. We urge committee members to approve provisions that will help to address the infectious disease consequences that directly arise from substance use disorders.

Critically, the Eliminating Opioid Related Infectious Disease Act includes expanded and coordinated surveillance of infections, including HIV, hepatitis B and C, endocarditis, and other communicable health threats associated with substance use disorders, and authorizes provider training to coordinate care for infectious diseases and addiction. The Substance Use Disorder Workforce Loan Repayment Act would provide educational loan repayment for clinicians whose primary role is caring for patients with substance use disorders, including treatment of infectious diseases arising from substance use.

Together, the bills will provide critical resources and strategies that will integrate medical services to diagnose, treat and prevent infectious diseases into the federal response to the opioid crisis, and address the need for a ready, trained and sufficient health workforce to detect, control and deliver coordinated care for infections with escalating incidence as a result of increasing injecting drug use.

As societies with more than 12,000 infectious diseases, pediatric and HIV physicians, IDSA, HIVMA and PIDS made recommendations reflected in both bills. They include the addition of endocarditis, a heart valve infection, to the list of infections related to the opioid epidemic. Not currently under national surveillance, endocarditis is a heart valve infection that almost always results in hospitalization, compared to the usually silent acquisition of viral infections such as HIV and Hepatitis C. Surveillanc of this condition will lead to more timely identification of substance abuse disorder-related outbreaks. Our recommendation regarding educational loan repayment addressed a significant factor leading to fewer physicians pursuing training in infectious diseases and HIV care, at a time when the need for that expertise is increasing. 

The bills before the committee this week reflect leadership and commitment to confronting the combined public health threats of the growing opioid epidemic and the outbreaks of infectious diseases the crisis has fueled. The committee’s approval will be an essential first step to confronting this crisis, and recognizing its nationwide impacts.

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