Healthcare Policy Concern – Prescription Drug Overdose

Drug and substance abuse continues to be a pervasive problem in the United States. More specifically, the use of opioids has been on the rise in the youth. With the endemic nature of opioid abuse in the teenage population, there is need to educate high school students about the effects of drug and substance abuse and the risk factors associated with drug abuse. The opioid crisis has received much attention in the U.S. as more adolescents than ever are dying from an opioid overdose. It is important the youth are exposed to an educational program that will influence their reaction to the drugs. This presentation suggests the educational program should be included in the school curriculum, especially for high school students, as a way of expanding the knowledge of the students and enabling them to understand the challenges and effects associated with opioid abuse.

The study chose Senator Rob Portman of Ohio to lobby and advocate for the policy change. Mr. Portman has been at the forefront in the fight against drug and substance abuse in the United States. Previously, he has lobbied for various constitutional changes to tighten the process of drug distribution, manufacturing, and access. Similarly, in his efforts to curtail opioid abuse, the senator influenced recent efforts to enact bipartisan legislation to address the opioid epidemic in both state and national levels. His role in the program was considered indispensable as he will attempt to increase awareness and political influence on the issue.

One of the essential communication and presentation strategies is confidence. As Bubel et al. (2016) observe, there are two aspects of confidence; one must be confident as a speaker and exude confidence too in the material presented. Confidence can either be innate or acquired; however, in most cases, self-confidence is acquired. The presentation considers the essentiality of self-confidence in making the audience understand the negative effects of opioid abuse. Additionally, clarity is another crucial ingredient of the presentation. Irrespective of the complexity of the topic, it is essential that important points are presented logically and coherently. The presentation understands that most people interested in knowing about opioid abuse may not have the technical expertise to understand some of the jargons associated with nursing and medicine. Clarity further requires that a presentation is ended with a recap of the major points, a construct that this presentation considers.

Apart from clarity in content, setting the state is another important presentation strategy. According to Bailey (2018), it is always advisable to start with an introduction as it sets the stage for a collaborative and interactive meeting. More specifically, Kurtzman and Greene (2016) suggest that when giving a speech or presentation about an idea, it is important to talk about the purpose, the need, and reason. This presentation gives background about the severity and prevalence of opioid use amongst teenagers citing statistics from different sources. As well, it makes the audience understand the need for a change in school policy to ensure that addition and exposure to the drug are prevented at infant stages. Similarly, the presentation will use icebreakers and engage the audience through an interactive process. An interactive process ensures that the audience is given a chance to contribute to the presentation either by asking and answering questions. In so doing, the subject manner will be understood and remembered by the audience.

In the evaluation, the content delivered was exhaustive. The video presentation gave a comprehensive analysis of opioid use in the U.S. and the increasing consumption in the adolescent population. However, the content should be improved to provide descriptive statistics. As for the method of delivery, the effective methods of delivery such as staying connected to the audience, effective opening, and grammar were used. However, staying connected to the audience was an issue that requires self-improvement. In the style of delivery, various cues such as voice clarity, gestures, and appearances were used. However, maintaining an eye contact was difficult thereby requiring self-improvement.

Overall, the video presentation gave precise information about the prevalence, risk factors and a proposed policy change about opioid abuse. The paper further considered an advocacy representative, senator from Ohio, to champion the legislative cause. In the presentation, the styles of delivery, content, and methods of delivery were superb.

References

Kurtzman, E. T., & Greene, J. (2016). Effective presentation of healthcare performance information for consumer decision making: A systematic review. Patient education and counseling, 99(1), 36-43.

Bailey, R. L. (2018). An Overview of Classroom-based Speech-Language Pathology Services. In Viewpoints on Interventions for Learners with Disabilities (pp. 183-196). Emerald Publishing Limited.

Bubel, M., Jiang, R., Lee, C. H., Shi, W., & Tse, A. (2016, May). AwareMe: addressing fear of public speech through awareness. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems(pp. 68-73). ACM.

Dart, R. C., Surratt, H. L., Cicero, T. J., Parrino, M. W., Severtson, S. G., Bucher-Bartelson, B., & Green, J. L. (2015). Trends in opioid analgesic abuse and mortality in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 372(3), 241-248.