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Remarks at NIH HEAL Investigator's Meeting

Alex M. Azar II
HEAL Investigator's Meeting
January 17, 2020
Bethesda, MD

It's an honor to speak to people who are so dedicated to ending our country's crisis of opioid addiction and providing Americans with better treatment for the real problem of chronic pain.
These goals represent some of President Trump's top priorities—not just in health, but priorities for his presidency, period.
He has heard from so many Americans about the damage that the opioid crisis has done to families and communities throughout this country, and I’m sure some of you have known its harms firsthand in your communities or families as well.

As Prepared for Delivery

Good afternoon, and thank you all for having me here today.

I'm grateful to those of you who took the time to travel to Washington for this meeting, and to everyone at NIH who has helped make this meeting and the entire HEAL Initiative possible.

It's an honor to speak to people who are so dedicated to ending our country's crisis of opioid addiction and providing Americans with better treatment for the real problem of chronic pain.

These goals represent some of President Trump's top priorities—not just in health, but priorities for his presidency, period.

He has heard from so many Americans about the damage that the opioid crisis has done to families and communities throughout this country, and I'm sure some of you have known its harms firsthand in your communities or families as well.

Tackling this challenge is a part of President Trump's much broader vision for healthcare. From day one, he has worked to create a system with affordable, personalized care, a system that puts you in control, provides peace of mind, and treats you like a human being, not a number.

The research that many of you are pursuing will help deliver on that healthcare vision. It will help provide patients with pain treatment that's personalized to them, rather than more reams of pill prescriptions.

It will help Americans struggling with opioid use disorder gain access to treatment that works for them. And it will help us understand how we can meet the needs of infants born dependent on opioids.

HHS is working to deliver on the President's vision for healthcare through three cross-cutting platforms: reforming the financing of care, deriving better value from that care, and tackling specific, impactable health challenges.

The opioid crisis is one of those impactable challenges. The toll it is taking on our country demands attention. Our country has never faced an addiction crisis like this before.

But we also know we have the chance to make a real impact.

In fact, we've already begun to see results: In 2018, provisional counts of the number of Americans dying of drug overdoses began to decline, for the first time in more than two decades.

In 2019, our estimates suggest more than 1.3 million Americans were receiving treatment for opioid use disorder—up 38 percent since 2016.

And since President Trump took office, the total amount of opioids being prescribed has declined 32 percent. While we're beginning to turn the tide on the crisis, our job is far from complete.

All of HHS has been enlisted in this fight, as reflected in the five-point strategy that was launched in President Trump's first year in office.

As many of you know, these five points are better treatment, prevention, and recovery services; better data on the epidemic; better pain management; better targeting of overdose-reversing medication; and better research on pain and addiction.

Leaders across NIH played a key role in laying out that strategy, and NIH-supported researchers have already played a significant role in giving us the tools we need to combat this crisis.

As many of you know, NIH-supported research helped develop the nasal form of naloxone, the most commonly used nasal spray for reversing an opioid overdose.

More recently, just over the past few years, NIH-supported work has helped further illuminate the effectiveness of various forms of medication-assisted treatment, including in extended-release forms.

We have tools that work, including medication-assisted treatment, and we are developing a better understanding of how to treat pain effectively.

But greater research in both of these areas will be the key to increasing our success going forward.

That is where you, and your important work funded by the HEAL Initiative, comes in. When facing a public crisis of this magnitude, we are so blessed to have researchers like you, representing the world's finest community of biomedical researchers, working with the NIH, the world's finest biomedical research institution.

In particular, I've been especially heartened to learn about how the NIH is working with many researchers from small biotech firms, who are excited about combating this crisis and developing more effective pain and addiction treatments.

I want to make one final point about your work in a broader public health context.

Tragically, in many ways, the federal government was too slow in recognizing the seriousness of the opioid addiction crisis. But we are now moving very rapidly, and we're glad that you're eager to work with us.

It is a remarkable accomplishment for the NIH and for all the researchers involved to have launched this nearly $1 billion research effort in the timeframe that you did.

In that same vein, we are always looking at threats looming on the horizon, including other substance abuse challenges, such as rising rates of deaths from stimulants.

Thanks to the strong advocacy from the Trump Administration, of HHS, and key leaders in Congress, the 2020 federal spending package gives states flexibility to use their $1 billion in State Opioid Response grants not only to combat opioid addiction and abuse, but also methamphetamine and cocaine addiction—disorders for which we don't have the effective medication options that we have for opioid addiction.

All of you have worked with the federal government enough to know that we're not exactly known for our agility or ability to act instantly.

Thankfully, you could always compare the pace of the federal government to the pace of, say, academic publishing, and we might look quite a bit better.

But I want to emphasize that we want to continue to work closely with you, as we try to beat this current crisis and understand and treat emerging substance abuse crises.

We've already seen real results from efforts by government, academic institutions, and the private sector, so I want to assure you: Your work will save lives, and we will put it to use as quickly as we can.

We still have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but, together, we can help Americans who are struggling and heal the individuals and communities who are suffering across our country.

With that, I'd like to invite Dr. Collins back up here to offer his closing remarks. Dr. Collins?

Content created by Speechwriting and Editorial Division 
Content last reviewed on January 17, 2020