FDA’s Online Opioid Summit – How Internet Stakeholders Can Proactively Reduce the Availability of Opioids Online
Earlier this month, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held its third Online Opioid Summit, a day-long event convening representatives from prominent technology and social media companies, academic researchers, and experts from public health nonprofits, including NABP, to discuss ways to collaborate to reduce the availability of opioids on the internet. Introduced in […]
Read More ›Why Medicine Sold on Social Media Can Be Deadly
If Charlie had known how prolific fake pills on social media were, would he still be alive? It’s a haunting question for his parents, Ed and Mary Ternan, because the answer is probably “yes.” Had he known, maybe he wouldn’t have taken a single pill last year, bought on social media, to relieve his back pain. He thought it was a painkiller, but instead it was a […]
Read More ›Truths and Misconceptions About FDA’s Compounding MOU
Earlier this month, FDA announced it will provide states one more year to decide whether to sign its compounding memorandum of understanding (MOU) before the agency begins enforcing the statutory 5% limit on out-of-state distribution of compounded human drug products. This comes after many states asked for more time to wrangle with the legal and […]
Read More ›To Protect Public Health, NABP Clearinghouse Helps Boards Track Administrative and Disciplinary Data
One of the most important responsibilities a board of pharmacy has is ensuring its thousands of pharmacists, pharmacy interns, pharmacy technicians, facilities, and more practice safely and legally. This is a daunting task within itself, but we have a tool that can help. NABP Clearinghouse eases the workload. It’s a national database of disciplinary information […]
Read More ›Moving Through the Pandemic Into the Future of Health Care
NABP has a long history of partnering with health care regulatory and professional associations to protect public health, and COVID-19 kicked these collaborations into high gear. We reached out to the leaders of several of these partner organizations to share their insights from the past year and how they see the lessons learned impacting the […]
Read More ›Nonprescription Insulin Scam Puts Patients at Severe Risk
NABP’s accreditations and inspections provide a unique opportunity to observe drug safety issues from a national perspective in both pharmacy practice and drug distribution. Through the processing of accreditation applications of digital pharmacies and drug wholesale distributors, we have recently observed schemes involving nonprescription insulin that pose important health threats to patients. While these pharmacies and wholesalers cannot become NABP accredited until corrective measures have been taken and they have ceased such activities, these schemes continue to threaten patients in non-accredited facilities. We hope that creating awareness of these activities […]
Read More ›Annual Training Gives Board Inspectors Compounding Oversight Tools
In a recent blog post, we discussed new NABP tools that facilitate FDA’s efforts to help boards of pharmacy improve the oversight of compounding pharmacies. Another way we do this is through our partnership with CriticalPoint, LLC to provide annual inspector training. The Sterile Compounding Inspection Training (SCIT) and certification program covers all aspects of sterile […]
Read More ›NABP, FDA Collaborate to Improve Compounding Pharmacy Oversight
In 2012, many of the people who received contaminated steroid injections produced at the New England Compounding Center had already been suffering from chronic pain. The compounded drugs were supposed to provide relief. Instead, they infected these patients with fungal meningitis, killing 64 and sickening 753. The tragedy was a wakeup call for regulators, […]
Read More ›Pharmacists can help increase confidence in the COVID-19 vaccines
Developing three vaccines against COVID-19 in a relatively short amount of time was monumental. But what might end up being equally Herculean: convincing everyone to get vaccinated. Studies show that Americans have varying levels of hesitancy about receiving a COVID-19 shot depending upon their ethnic background, geographical location, and political affiliation, among other factors. Add […]
Read More ›Could Pharmacists Improve Access to Health Care in Rural America?
This article was adapted from an edition of Policy Perspectives, published in the February 2020 issue of Innovations. For decades, members of Congress and health policy thought leaders have prioritized policies to improve rural health through increased federal appropriations, special reimbursement structures, and distinct models of care delivery for rural health providers. For the nearly […]
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