Publications by authors named "K E Hawk"
Objectives: In response to the escalating overdose crisis there is an urgent need for innovative strategies to reduce overdose death. Emergency Medical Services (EMS) is uniquely poised to reduce mortality and other harms associated with opioid use through prevention, harm reduction, and treatment, yet there is a paucity of nationally recognized best practices or quality measures to guide prehospital quality improvement (QI) efforts related to opioid use disorder (OUD).
Methods: A multidisciplinary team of subject matter experts in addiction medicine, EMS, public health, and QI was convened to develop recommendations for a model QI framework for prehospital OUD prevention, harm reduction, and treatment based on the Model for Improvement framework.
Article Synopsis
- This study aimed to assess whether a method called implementation facilitation is more cost-effective than traditional educational strategies in promoting the use of buprenorphine for opioid use disorder in emergency departments (EDs).
- Researchers conducted a cost-effectiveness analysis during "Project ED Health," measuring outcomes like quality-adjusted life-years and patient engagement with community care, and found that while the costs were similar, the facilitation method led to significantly better effectiveness.
- The results indicated a 74% to 75% chance that implementation facilitation is considered cost-effective within typical health care spending thresholds, suggesting it could be a viable approach to improve opioid treatment outcomes.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly reshaped the global practice of nuclear medicine. Through this shift, the integration of AI into nuclear medicine education, clinical practice, and research has a significant impact on workforce diversity. While AI in nuclear medicine has the potential to be a powerful tool to improve clinical, research and educational practice, and to enhance patient care, careful examination of the impact of each AI tool needs to be undertaken with respect to the impact on, among other factors, diversity in the nuclear medicine workforce.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeer support for patients with opioid use disorder in the emergency department: A narrative review.
J Am Coll Emerg Physicians Open
August 2024
Faced with a growing opioid overdose crisis, emergency departments (EDs) are increasingly hiring peers-people with lived experiences of addiction and recovery-to work with patients in the ED who have opioid use disorders (OUDs) or who have experienced an opioid overdose. Despite a clear need for more support for patients with OUD and rapid expansion in grant funding for peer programs, there are limited data on how these programs affect clinical outcomes and how they are best implemented within the ED. In this narrative review, we synthesize the existing evidence on how to develop and implement peer programs for OUD in the ED setting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Buprenorphine is an effective yet underused treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD).
Objective: To evaluate the feasibility (acceptability, tolerability, and safety) of 7-day injectable extended-release buprenorphine in patients with minimal to mild opioid withdrawal.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This nonrandomized trial comprising 4 emergency departments in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and Pacific geographic areas of the US included adults aged 18 years or older with moderate to severe OUD and Clinical Opiate Withdrawal Scale (COWS) scores less than 8 (minimal to mild), in which scores range from 0 to 7, with higher scores indicating increasing withdrawal.