Reduction of Illicit Drug Use

Reduction of Illicit Drug Use

Abstract

Addiction or dependence on a psychoactive substance is harmful and hazardous. It results when the substance is taken in a way that is not recommended or used more than prescribed. Health officials declare that substance abuse causes considerable impairments in multiple aspects and include health issues, disabilities, social issues, failure to meet responsibilities, among others. In the past decade, substance abuse has surged drastically, with over 1300 people dying in New York, 2016. Out of all the boroughs in New York City, Bronx had the highest overdose deaths. The life-threatening actions have forced a revolution on epidemiology. Previously, epidemiology was only applicable to communicable diseases, but due to substance use, systematized sets of concepts have been developed to attempt to manage the drug abuse. Therefore, the present write-up will highlight the conceptual and epidemiological models and how they relate to the topic. The models have myriad functions to health studies and disease investigations like identification of the causal agents, calculating mortality and morbidity, and measuring of therapeutic and preventive measures.

Reduction of Illicit Drug Use

The conceptual framework of the write-up will utilize quantitative studies, whereas the epidemiological model will be applied in the triangle triad.

The systematic review work by Carney et al. highlights the conceptual models used in the reduction of drug use. The main objective of the study was to examine the effectiveness of assessment-only condition compared to brief school-based intervention. The authors reviewed six pieces of literature, with a total of 1176 adolescents. The average age of these individuals was 16.9 years. Trials were carried out in the United Kingdom or the United States from March 2013 to February 2015. They had primary and secondary outcomes. Cessation of cannabis use was the former outcome, whereas, the other outcome was to investigate the problem behaviors linked to substance abuse. By utilizing the products – confidence interval and standardized mean difference- of GRADE approach, they were able to conclude their study. The brief school-based intervention showed substantial effects on behavior and substance abuse. The long-term follow up reduces cannabis abuse considerably as compared to medium and short-term follow-ups (Patnode et al., 2014).

Epidemiologic Model

There exist multiple causation models of diseases. The simplest one being the epidemiologic triad. It is termed as a triad (triangle) because it is made up of three components; agent, host and employment. For a disease to emerge, an interaction between the susceptible host and agent in a specific environment is a must. Thus, the three components interrelate in diverse and complicated ways. Although a perfect balance is a prerequisite for the disease to be produced.

Fig 1: Epidemiologic triangle

Initially, the agent was known as the infectious pathogen- parasite, bacterium, or virus. This element must be available for the disease to occur. Nonetheless, the presence of an agent alone is not adequate to bring a disease. Other elements dictate whether a disease will result. Currently, the discipline, epidemiology, has been expanded to include other causes of disease like chemical and physical elements. The person who contracts the disease is referred to as the host. The susceptibility or response by the host to the causative agent is dependent on intrinsic factors (risk factors) of the individual. The determinants are divided into three groups; biological (race, sex, genotype), behavioral (drug abuse, seatbelt use, risk-taking), and psychosocial (education, marital status, occupation).  A favorable environment facilitates the transmission of the disease. This factor, too, is classified into three; socioeconomic (income level, policy, culture), biological (fauna and the density of population) and physical (natural features; climate and humanmade structures; ventilation stairs).

Originally, epidemiology was concerned exclusively with communicable diseases, its scope has broadened in the past years and involves a collection of health behaviors and health problems. Recently, epidemiology has been applied in the study of substance abuse.

The complete research topic is “Reduction of illicit drug use among non-Hispanic Caucasian adolescents between the ages of 12-24 in the Bronx NY.” In applying the model to the research topic, the host will be non-Hispanic Caucasian adolescents between the ages of 12-24. The environment will be in the Bronx, NY. According to healthy people 2020 article, school social environments, income status, and level of caring and supervision of parents’ influence adolescents. The goal of the study is to enhance the safety and health of adolescents’ (Real, 2017).

In regards to Bronx, substance- heroin, and opioid- misuse has escalated due to racial politics who do not provide sufficient resources. With 2016 seeing high overdose deaths among the white residents as compared to Hispanics and African-Americans. Though the mayor, Bill de Blasio, is focused on reducing the fatal overdoses (Real).

The strength of the epidemiology triad is that it is useful for numerous diseases. However, the model does not work for non-infectious diseases.