Agenda Comparison Grid and Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief.
Agenda Comparison Grid and Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief
Introduction
Healthcare has been a policy and legislative issue for many years in the United States. Different presidents have debated over healthcare and signed into law various legislations to help enhance and promote health outcomes among the communities. As a healthcare professional, one may be called upon to provide guidance, expertise and opinion on healthcare issues that are to be included in new laws and policies. In addition, one may be involved in planning of new organizational policies and statutes and there is a need to be conversant with national healthcare issues. The purpose of this paper is to analyze a recent presidential healthcare agenda, prepare a fact sheet to communicate the importance of a healthcare issue policy and its impact.Agenda Comparison Grid and Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief.
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Part 1: Agenda Comparison Grid
Identify the Population Health concern you selected. | Opioid Crisis
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Describe the Population Health concern you selected and the factors that contribute to it. | Opioid misuse, overdose, and addiction has caused many public health problems including deaths. Opioid has been a seismic crisis that became prevalent in the United Stated in the late 1990’s. Deaths emanating from abuse and overdose of opioids have increased and affect both men and women from different backgrounds and ethnicity. According to American Academy of Pediatrics (2019), an average of 115 people die every day from opioid crisis making it an issue of health and legislative concern. Agenda Comparison Grid and Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief.
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Administration (President Name) | President Trump | President Obama | President Bush |
Describe the administrative agenda focus related to this issue for the current and two previous presidents. |
Trump’s administration declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. Several ways of dealing with the crisis, improving access to recovery and treatment services were discussed. The administration has focused on ensuring overdose-reversing drugs are available and adequately distributed.
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Obama’s administration focused on healthcare access and availability to ensure people affected by opioid crisis can access better and faster treatment. It also restricted the ability to overprescribe drugs. | Bush’s administration created a budget for law enforcement since opioid addiction was considered as a crime rather than a health concern. |
Identify the allocations of financial and other resources that the current and two previous presidents dedicated to this issue. | Department of Health and Human Services spend over $900 million for Opioid funding to support treatment in states and civil groups in 2017.
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The accessibility and availability of over-dose reversing drugs was promoted. | Funding was done to conduct training and provision of resources given for law enforcement. Offenders were prosecuted to serve jail terms while others were sent to rehabilitation centres. |
Explain how each of the presidential administrations approached the issue. | Trump’s administration used a five-point strategy in dealing with the opioid crisis including treatment, recovery, research on addiction, pain management, and prevention. The Department of Health and Human Services recommended prescription of Naloxone to patients who have high opioid overdoses. | Obama’s administration availed the treatment of opioids overdose and addiction to rural areas and marginalized communities by making it easy to access services and public transportation. | Opioid crisis was treated as a criminal issue despite funding being available. The main focus was law enforcement ability while the crisis continued to remain prevalent. The affected people were not able to access treatment services. |
Part 2: Agenda Comparison Grid Analysis
Administration (President Name) | President Trump | President Obama | President Bush |
Which administrative agency would most likely be responsible for helping you address the healthcare issue you selected?
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Department of Health and Human Services would be the agency responsible to help address the opioid crisis. The Trump administration is more proactive in dealing with the crisis since it was declared a nationwide health emergency in 2017.
The formation of Commission on Combating Drug Addiction indicate the seriousness of the federal government to deal with the opioid crisis. The commission provided recommendation on how to address the crisis. Various changes in Medicaid were proposed to manage the crisis. Declaring the Opioid addiction as a national crisis expanded access to telemedicine services in managing the addiction. The signing of the International Narcotics Trafficking Emergency Response by Detecting Incoming Contraband with Technology (INTERDICT) Act boosted screening at border points for customs agents.
Trump’s administration has been aggressive and committed in dealing with the opioid crisis than other previous administration and would be the best administration in addressing the opioid crisis.
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The Obama administration tried to deal with the opioid crisis compared to the Bush administration. The Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention Plan helped to address the crisis but did not incorporate the abuse of fentanyl.
In passing Fair Sentencing Act, misuse of different drugs was given different sentencing. When CARA Act was signed into law, it expanded access of naloxone which was used to treat opioid addiction.
The opioid crisis became a health challenge but the Obama administration delayed in dealing with it until 2016 when the Congress approved $1 billion for treatment. |
The opioid crisis was in the initial stages during Bush administration. The measures taken by the federal government were more reactive than proactive in managing the crisis. The government was not well prepared with the necessary resources and technology to combat the illegal drug market. |
How do you think your selected healthcare issue might get on the agenda for the current and two previous presidents? How does it stay there? | Trump’s administration has maintained the agenda of addressing the opioid crisis by setting a five-point strategy of managing it | Obama’s administration set the opioid crisis agenda by expanding universal health coverage through Affordable Care Act which guaranteed access to care in rural settings | Bush administration set the opioid crisis from a legal perspective where the crisis was tackled as a crime while community settings remained with little or no access to treatment services. |
Who would you choose to be the entrepreneur/ champion/sponsor of the healthcare issue you selected for the current and two previous presidents? | Admiral James Winnefeld woulf be the sponsor of the opioid crisis having lost a son to the opioid drug overdose in 2017. | Senator Sheldon would be the best champion of the opioid crisis having introduced the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act in 2016 | Hilary Clinton who was the first lady in the mid-nineties when the crisis began would be the best champion. |
Narrative with the Facts
The opioid crisis is imperative for legislative agenda since it affects people of all races, ethnicity, gender and economic status. Opioid addiction has been proven to affect older adults due to the high reliance on opioids to manage pain since they ail from chronic illnesses. According to Soelberg et al (2017), 2.5% of adults over 65 years of age were using opioids prescriptions without medical indication in 2013. Six percent of this populations were later found to be suffering from opioid use disorder (Wickramatilake et al., 2017).Agenda Comparison Grid and Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief. Long term use of opioids has been found to cause respiratory issues and drowsiness. In addition, persons who have high addiction levels are unable to perform work effectively, and have interpersonal and social problems. According to Gostin et al (2017), the opioid crisis leads to over 30,000 deaths annually in the USA. In 2017, over 65,000 mortalities were as a result of drug overdose. The number of deaths has been rising annually making opioid crisis a legislative issue. Management of opioid use disorder and its symptoms has been costly to the government and families. In the financial year 2017/2018, an estimated $11 billion was used to address the crisis in terms of prevention, treatment, and recovery care services (Gostin, Hodge, & Noe, 2017).Agenda Comparison Grid and Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief.
Nurses have a role to play in the opioid crisis agenda setting through early recognition, diagnosis, treatment, and provision of guidance and counselling since they are in more contact with patients compared to other health professionals. Nurses can help to manage the crisis by identifying patients who are starting to get addicted to opioids by monitoring their prescriptions and helping them to seek help. Nurses can advocate for implementation of necessary policies and strategies to manage pain and opioid addiction treatment.
In summary, management of opioid crisis needs to be sustained to bring the numbers of fatalities down and to ensure that the economic and social effects are mitigated. Legislation and advocacy will help to manage and deal with the opioid crisis. Agenda Comparison Grid and Fact Sheet or Talking Points Brief.