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Graphic images of a mom and dad passed out, mouths agape, in a car with their 4-year-old still strapped into the back seat. A video of a woman lying in a grocery store aisle as a toddler in pink pajamas cries and shakes her. The police report of a 7-year-old who told her bus driver on the way back from school that she couldn’t wake her parents. Such stories, circulated on social media in recent months, have highlighted the toll of the epidemic of opioid abuse on the youngest Americans. They have become a rallying cry for pediatricians calling for better psychological counseling and other supports to better protect the children of addicts. (Cha, 10/31)

As the nation continues to confront an epidemic of opioid and prescription painkiller addiction and overdoses, its victims seem to flood emergency rooms. But a study out Monday highlights a surprising group of patients suffering from opioid poisoning at rates that have also marked a dramatic increase: adolescents, children and even toddlers. (Luthra, 11/1)

Easy access to opioids has harmed even society’s youngest members: The number of children and teenagers hospitalized for painkiller poisoning has doubled in recent decades, according to a study published Monday. ... Researchers examined a database of hospitalization data on children, aptly named KID — Kids’ Inpatient Database — that now covers 44 different states. Using ICD-9 codes, which describe the reason the patient is in the hospital, researchers were able to identify the number of opioid poisonings. They split the data up into age groups and calculated how the hospitalization rates changed over time. (Swetlitz, 10/31)

Hospitalization for prescription opioid poisoning among U.S. children and teens nearly doubled during a recent 15-year period, and grew especially dramatically among children under 4, according to a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. Using a database of millions of hospital discharges, the researchers estimated that 2,918 patients aged 1 to 19 were hospitalized for prescription opioid poisonings in 2012, up from 1,049 in 1997. Most hospitalizations occurred among teens 15 to 19. (Levin Becker, 10/31)

To encourage the centers to offer more counseling when patients need it, Maryland’s Medicaid agency is changing the way it reimburses them. Rather than paying a flat rate for all patients, the federal-state health care program for the poor in March will begin to pay providers for as much counseling and related medical services as are needed for individual patients. At the same time, the state will lower its traditional per-person weekly reimbursement rate for opioid treatment centers. The new fee structure is similar to schemes developed in New York and California. New Jersey is moving in the same direction. The shift reflects a growing consensus among medical researchers that patients who receive a combination of addiction medication and counseling fare better than those who receive only one or the other. (Vestal, 11/1)

One of those new ways [to help addicts] is SPOT, which opened in Boston earlier this year to give drug users a safe place to go when they’re high. A nurse monitors users for signs of an overdose, and the facility also connects people to rehab programs. In less than six months, SPOT has been visited more than 1,500 times by 275 different people, including several friends [Tommy] Blais brought in because they seemed overly sedated. Not a single user has fatally overdosed, and many have come back repeatedly. (Bond, 11/1)