UK Professor Sharon Walsh |
The award, announced Monday at the start of National Public Heath Week, is given annually to those who have demonstrated their dedication to improving the health of Lexington residents. It is named for the late Rice C. Leach, who was commissioner of health for Lexington and the state and spent more than 50 years as a public-health physician.
Walsh is the principal investigator on UK's largest grant ever, an $87 million study to determine how to reduce opioid overdose deaths in Kentucky and create a national model. It involves Jefferson, Fayette, Franklin, Kenton, Campbell, Mason, Greenup, Boyd, Carter, Bourbon, Clark, Madison, Jessamine, Boyle, Knox and Floyd counties.
Walsh and her team have established partnerships with behavioral-health and criminal-justice agencies to implement an integrated set of evidence-based practices to combat the opioid epidemic, including communication campaigns, expanding capacity to medication-assisted treatment for opioid-use disorder, providing overdose education and distributing 4,600 units of naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses.Chief Marc Bramlage (Photo by Frank Handshoe) |
from KENTUCKY HEALTH NEWS https://ift.tt/gDZYLUv
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