Millburn, NJ, Sept. 29, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MILLBURN — The Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day Learning Series will continue this month with a special webinar focusing on addiction recovery to commemorate Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day, a statewide initiative to raise public awareness about the opioid epidemic and to mobilize prevention and treatment communities. The webinar will be presented by the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey (PDFNJ) and the Office of the New Jersey Coordinator of Addiction Responses and Enforcement Strategies (NJ CARES), which is responsible for overseeing addiction-fighting efforts across the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General.
The webinar, “Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day: Where We Stand & How We Move Forward,” will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, October 6. Dr. Andrew Kolodny, a national expert on the opioid epidemic, will serve as the keynote speaker and highlight where New Jersey and the nation currently stand in addressing the opioid crisis. Kolodny is the Medical Director of Opioid Policy Research at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He is also the executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, an organization with a mission to reduce morbidity and mortality caused by overprescribing of opioid analgesics.
John Butler and Jennifer Fearon, policy advisors in the Office of the New Jersey Governor, will also present at the webinar and highlight the initiatives the Murphy Administration has taken to tackle the opioid epidemic.
“Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day is an important day to share information about the risks of prescription opioids and their link to heroin and fentanyl,” PDFNJ Executive Director Angelo Valente said. “New Jersey has led the way in spreading awareness of the opioid epidemic and acting to address this crisis. This webinar will provide participants even more data and facts on the issue, as well as more insight into what they can do to keep their families and communities safe from opioid misuse.”
This webinar will be the 10th in the 2022 Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day Learning Series. In 2021, PDFNJ and NJ CARES collaborated on 10 webinars as part of the series. The organizations first combined efforts on the series in 2020 as a strategy to provide education on the opioid crisis in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The series is a branch of Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day, which has been held in New Jersey on October 6 each year since 2016. The statewide single-day initiative is organized by PDFNJ and The Community Coalition for a Safe & Healthy Morris, in cooperation with the New Jersey Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services and the Governor’s Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. The goal of the day is to mobilize the prevention and treatment communities, community leaders and concerned citizens to raise awareness of the potential for dependency on prescribed pain medicine, as well as their link to heroin and fentanyl use in the state.
In 2021, more than 3,000 people in New Jersey died from suspected drug overdoses, a vast majority of which involved some form of opioid including prescription painkillers, heroin and synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl.
The next webinar, “Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day,” will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, October 6. To learn more about the Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day and to register for this and future webinars, please visit knockoutday.drugfreenj.org.
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Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey: Best known for its statewide substance use prevention advertising campaign, the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey is a private not-for-profit coalition of professionals from the communications, corporate and government communities whose collective mission is to reduce demand for illicit drugs in New Jersey through media communication. To date, more than $200 million in broadcast time and print space has been donated to the Partnership’s New Jersey campaign, making it the largest public service advertising campaign in New Jersey’s history. Since its inception, the Partnership has garnered 217 advertising and public relations awards from national, regional and statewide media organizations.
