MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — When the White House allowed the Association of American Medical Colleges to invite higher education representatives to President Barack Obama’s West Virginia visit, WVU’s health sciences leader made the cut.
Former WVU Medical School Dean John Prescott, now with the AAMC, extended tickets to Dr. Clay Marsh, Vice President and Executive Dean of Health Sciences at WVU, and Dr. Joseph Shapiro, Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine Dean.
“The leading causes of death of individuals under 45 years old are injuries and accidents in almost every other state other than West Virginia and Ohio. The cause of death under 45 is car accidents in Ohio. In West Virginia, it’s drug overdoses,” Marsh explained.
Marsh is uncertain of the exact agenda for the Wednesday presidential visit, but he said if he can, he’d like to discuss what West Virginians need to fight what’s been called an opioid and heroin epidemic.
“We want to really focus on helping support laws that would make selling heroin and distributing heroin a much more serious problem. And, for people who are addicted, instead of just looking at jail time, we really want to focus on rehabilitation,” Marsh suggested.
Meanwhile, WVU Health Sciences is focused on training first responders and medical professionals to administer Naloxone, the antidote to opioid or heroin overdoses.
Marsh said to address the crisis it’s also important to work with providers who prescribe highly addictive pain killers.
“We want to appropriately offer alternative treatments for people in pain or with other needs so we are appropriately dosing them with medication that wouldn’t be as addictive and wouldn’t lead to the same problems,” he explained.
The White House said President Obama “hopes to discuss local, state and federal efforts as well as private sector initiatives with those who are addressing the epidemic on a daily basis.”
He will visit the East End Family Resources Center in Charleston.
That event is not open to the public, but there’s an expectation of national coverage of President Obama’s three hour touchdown in the Mountain State.
Marsh said discussion of a negative subject matter should lead to positive results in West Virginia and nationwide.
“This is our opportunity to start to rewrite the history of our state and create the beacon for others to follow,” Marsh maintained. “It’s a great privilege for us the president is coming to Charleston. The job is on us to make things much better.”