The Criminal Justice Response to the Opioid Crisis in East Baton Rouge Parish

This report describes: 1) the history and current state of the opioid crisis in East Baton Rouge Parish; 2) the current and planned efforts of the Innovative Prosecution Solutions for Combating Violent Crime and Illegal Opioids (IPS) grant to respond to the crisis; and 3) recommendations for criminal justice practitioners regarding the opioid crisis in our community. The goal of the IPS grant is to reduce opioid-related deaths by fostering interagency collaboration to disrupt local opioid supply chains, educate the community about the dangers of opioid abuse and addiction, and provide support for individuals with opioid use disorder. The rising prevalence of opioid-related overdose deaths and violence is a significant issue in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. From 2014 to 2018, opioid poisoning-related emergency department visits increased by approximately 45%. During this five-year period, heroin poisoning-related emergency department visits increased by approximately 30% and non-heroin opioid poisoning-related emergency department visits increased by approximately 59%. From 2018 to 2019, opioid overdose deaths in East Baton Rouge Parish increased by approximately 29%. Opioid overdose deaths have consistently accounted for nearly all overdose deaths in East Baton Rouge Parish during this timeframe. Early attempts to address the opioid crisis were challenging due to a lack of trust and cooperation among governmental agencies and community members most affected by the opioid epidemic. Criminal justice practitioners (e.g., law enforcement, correctional officials, defense attorneys, prosecutors, court officials) have an important role in reducing opioid-related addiction, opioid-related overdose deaths, and opioid-related violence within East Baton Rouge Parish communities. Individuals with substance use disorder are often fearful of interacting with law enforcement due to the belief that they will be arrested for their addiction, decreasing the likelihood that these individuals will reach out for critical treatment. Therefore, public health officials are often reluctant to include criminal justice practitioners in opioid use disorder-related efforts, despite their ability to engage in meaningful, productive partnerships. For these perceptions to change, criminal justice practitioners must demonstrate a commitment to addiction and overdose prevention by forming vital partnerships and supporting their partners\u27 prevention efforts to address this epidemic. By engaging in meaningful community partnerships, criminal justice practitioners can implement and support efforts to improve the lives of individuals with opioid use disorder and reduce opioid overdose deaths. The recommendations were informed by empirical research related to criminal justice and public health interventions concerning opioid use disorder

Louisiana Children\u27s Trust Fund Annual Report 2021-2022

Child abuse and neglect is a leading factor in the staggeringly high rates of child mortality in Louisiana. In 2017, Louisiana had 44,793 total referrals for child abuse and neglect of which 19,851 were investigated (CWLA, 2019). Child abuse and neglect can have multiple detrimental effects on a child’s physical, psychological, and behavioral health. Effective prevention efforts are critical to ensuring the immediate and long-term safety and well-being of children in Louisiana. Each year, LCTF selects high-quality proposals and funds a range of prevention efforts to protect children, strengthen family well-being, and educate the public about children’s safety. Local, national, and global events have greatly impacted our communities since 2020. These events included various social, economic, political, and medical crises. Events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, led to political, social unrest and the resulting business closures have caused a great deal of instability in communities around the state. It has taken a toll on individuals’ mental health and well-being. The Child Welfare Information Gateway (2022) says that family wellbeing is an important factor in reducing the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. These events do not impact everyone equally. However, difficult times for some can be felt more severely by other, even more so for the most marginalized populations in our community. Understanding the broader context of how policies and events have impacted our communities is important. These events have caused many to examine bias, resources available for families at risk, and how communities and individuals are making decisions for their children. It has also identified barriers that prevent some children and families from seeking the opportunities and accessing the resources they need to thrive

What is Working to Reduce Violent Crime? Evidence-Based Solutions

The purpose of this review is to examine and evaluate current approaches to reducing violent crime. The review reports on supportive techniques, strategies, programs, and practices that are evidence-informed to combat criminal activity, delinquency, and community disorder. Ineffective techniques, strategies, and programs are also included. The review provides potential strategies and programs that require additional empirical research to show whether they work. This review includes the integration of education, employment, social services, and public health services into efforts to reduce crime and ease the burden on law enforcement and justice systems. Recommendations for reducing violent crime are included

Incidence of community-acquired lower respiratory tract infections and pneumonia among older adults in the United Kingdom: a population-based study.

Community-acquired lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) and pneumonia (CAP) are common causes of morbidity and mortality among those aged ≥65 years; a growing population in many countries. Detailed incidence estimates for these infections among older adults in the United Kingdom (UK) are lacking. We used electronic general practice records from the Clinical Practice Research Data link, linked to Hospital Episode Statistics inpatient data, to estimate incidence of community-acquired LRTI and CAP among UK older adults between April 1997-March 2011, by age, sex, region and deprivation quintile. Levels of antibiotic prescribing were also assessed. LRTI incidence increased with fluctuations over time, was higher in men than women aged ≥70 and increased with age from 92.21 episodes/1000 person-years (65-69 years) to 187.91/1000 (85-89 years). CAP incidence increased more markedly with age, from 2.81 to 21.81 episodes/1000 person-years respectively, and was higher among men. For both infection groups, increases over time were attenuated after age-standardisation, indicating that these rises were largely due to population aging. Rates among those in the most deprived quintile were around 70% higher than the least deprived and were generally higher in the North of England. GP antibiotic prescribing rates were high for LRTI but lower for CAP (mostly due to immediate hospitalisation). This is the first study to provide long-term detailed incidence estimates of community-acquired LRTI and CAP in UK older individuals, taking person-time at risk into account. The summary incidence commonly presented for the ≥65 age group considerably underestimates LRTI/CAP rates, particularly among older individuals within this group. Our methodology and findings are likely to be highly relevant to health planners and researchers in other countries with aging populations

Software comparison for evaluating genomic copy number variation for Affymetrix 6.0 SNP array platform

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Copy number data are routinely being extracted from genome-wide association study chips using a variety of software. We empirically evaluated and compared four freely-available software packages designed for Affymetrix SNP chips to estimate copy number: Affymetrix Power Tools (APT), Aroma.Affymetrix, PennCNV and CRLMM. Our evaluation used 1,418 GENOA samples that were genotyped on the Affymetrix Genome-Wide Human SNP Array 6.0. We compared bias and variance in the locus-level copy number data, the concordance amongst regions of copy number gains/deletions and the false-positive rate amongst deleted segments.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>APT had median locus-level copy numbers closest to a value of two, whereas PennCNV and Aroma.Affymetrix had the smallest variability associated with the median copy number. Of those evaluated, only PennCNV provides copy number specific quality-control metrics and identified 136 poor CNV samples. Regions of copy number variation (CNV) were detected using the hidden Markov models provided within PennCNV and CRLMM/VanillaIce. PennCNV detected more CNVs than CRLMM/VanillaIce; the median number of CNVs detected per sample was 39 and 30, respectively. PennCNV detected most of the regions that CRLMM/VanillaIce did as well as additional CNV regions. The median concordance between PennCNV and CRLMM/VanillaIce was 47.9% for duplications and 51.5% for deletions. The estimated false-positive rate associated with deletions was similar for PennCNV and CRLMM/VanillaIce.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>If the objective is to perform statistical tests on the locus-level copy number data, our empirical results suggest that PennCNV or Aroma.Affymetrix is optimal. If the objective is to perform statistical tests on the summarized segmented data then PennCNV would be preferred over CRLMM/VanillaIce. Specifically, PennCNV allows the analyst to estimate locus-level copy number, perform segmentation and evaluate CNV-specific quality-control metrics within a single software package. PennCNV has relatively small bias, small variability and detects more regions while maintaining a similar estimated false-positive rate as CRLMM/VanillaIce. More generally, we advocate that software developers need to provide guidance with respect to evaluating and choosing optimal settings in order to obtain optimal results for an individual dataset. Until such guidance exists, we recommend trying multiple algorithms, evaluating concordance/discordance and subsequently consider the union of regions for downstream association tests.</p