Background
White Earth Reservation began a partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to work on a prescription opioid abuse campaign. While planning the awareness campaign, we at White Earth realized that in order for this campaign to create a movement of change, we needed to tell our own stories. Through many months of planning, working with area residents and employees, and ensuring we had covered every story with the utmost care, We Rise Above (WRA) was developed.
We Rise Above “Gimookiimin”
We Rise Above is an awareness campaign created to combat prescription opioid abuse. Participants in WRA are community members who live on White Earth Reservation and are taking a stand against prescription opioids. Through WRA, a voice is given to those who have lost friends or family members to addiction, battled personal addictions, or to those who just want a change in the never-ending cycle of prescription opioids. The WRA campaign participants range from seventh graders to elders and each are demanding this epidemic to stop. Together, we can make our voices heard and we can create a movement of change.
What are prescription opioids?
Prescription opioids are medications prescribed by doctors to treat pain; examples of this these medications include morphine, codeine, methadone, oxycodone, hydrocodone, fentanyl, hydromorphone, and buprenorphine. Non-prescription opioids include illicit drugs such as heroin.
Prescription opioids can be extremely addictive and there are serious risks being addicted to these medications. Side effects include tolerance (need to consumer more and more for pain relief), physical dependence (withdrawal symptoms), increased sensitivity to pain, constipation, nausea, vomiting, confusion, depression, sweating, and more.
Prescription opioid facts:
- More than 191 million opioid prescriptions were dispensed to American patients in 2017.
- Two out of three drug overdose deaths in 2018 involved an opioid.
- One in four patients receiving long-term opioid therapy in a primary care setting struggles with opioid addiction.
- Nearly 450,000 people died from overdoses involving any opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids, from 1999-2018.
- In 2018, more than 31,000 deaths involving synthetic opioids, which is more deaths than from any other type of opioid.
What can you do?
For those wanting to help WRA, please spread our mission through social media, print materials, word of mouth, etc. The more people who are aware of this campaign, the more lives we can save and sadness we can prevent. Below you can find our materials in PDF and JPEG form.
Information was gathered from: https://www.cdc.gov. We Rise Above is a collaboration campaign by White Earth Nation Public Health and the CDC.
When we rise above prescription opioid abuse, we create a movement of change. Join us today and rise above prescription opioids. If you have any questions, please email contact.WEN@whiteearth-nsn.gov.
