New Center at Auburn Unifies Opioid-Fighting Efforts

A diversity of opioid-related research and education at Auburn University's Harrison School of Pharmacy is being unified under a new Center for Opioid Research, Education and Outreach. Leaders of the effort hope the center will serve as a catalyst to improve the opioid-fighting response in Alabama, which has one of the nation's highest rates of opioid prescribing.

Among the initiatives that are being brought together under the new center are education and training around use of naloxone and implementation of other measures to combat the opioid crisis, along with federally funded research on synthetic drugs.

“The center allows for faculty and professionals from individual disciplines to combine their efforts to achieve outcomes that might not have been possible without an organized structure,” said center director Karen Marlowe, assistant dean and professor in the school's Department of Pharmacy Practice.

Faculty members within Auburn's pharmacy school have historically entered into local partnerships with organizations such as Bradford Health Services, the Alabama District Attorneys Association and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.