Developing a Culture of Opioid Stewardship

The goal of opioid stewardship is to provide public health practitioners and health care professionals with the education and tools they need to appropriately prescribe opioid medications to patients for whom an opioid is indicated and to reduce the overall supply of unused opioid medications that might be diverted and used by individuals other than the intended patient. In this chapter, the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s experience with developing a comprehensive opioid stewardship approach illustrates that creating a statewide culture of opioid stewardship is a process requiring active involvement of health care professionals, provider and patient groups, law enforcement agencies, academic institutions and large health systems, state policymakers and politicians, and the general public. By analyzing Pennsylvania’s experience of building a culture of opioid stewardship, other states can learn how to foster opioid stewardship to ensure its effective spread across the nation.