University of Houston Law Center alumnus Collin Brodrick ’13 co-authored a peer-reviewed article in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse that suggests greater use of a medication to prevent opiate overdoses.
March 4, 2016 -- University of Houston Law Center alumnus Collin Brodrick ’13 argues the case for greater use of a drug that can prevent drug overdoses in a peer-reviewed article published recently in a medical journal.
“Legal regimes surrounding naloxone access: considerations for prescribers” was published in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse and co-authored by Brodrick’s wife, Dr. Joy Brodrick, and Dr. Bryon Adinoff.
The key assertion in the article is to increase the availability of Naloxone – an FDA-approved medication that is used to treat patients overdosing on opiates. The piece states, “death from opiod overdose occurs through respiratory depression…Naloxone is an opiod antagonist that reverses opiod depression and restores normal respiration.”
“Our mission was to make physicians more comfortable with prescribing Naloxone in the outpatient setting, which they don’t really do right now,” Brodrick said. “They do it mostly in the inpatient setting, when a patient comes into the emergency room already overdosing.
”Prescribing it as a preventative measure in the outpatient setting is really what will help address the epidemic, but providers are hesitant to do it at least partly because of the potential legal liabilities” he said, as well as a general lack of awareness about the medication.
Brodrick is an associate attorney at Chamblee, Ryan, Kershaw, & Anderson, P.C., a Dallas-based firm, and focuses on litigation matters and medical malpractice. Before graduating from the Law Center, he earned a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin. Joy Brodrick is a mental health clinical pharmacy specialist at the VA North Texas Healthcare System.
