It's been a week since voters approved Issue 1 in the November election. Voters passed the constitutional amendment with nearly 57% of the vote. The amendment will codify abortion protections and reproductive health freedoms into the state's founding document.
The issue passed despite strong opposition from Republican state lawmakers. From the moment Issue 1 passed, there has been defiance from some lawmakers vowing to still fight against abortion rights in the state.
Last week, Republican lawmakers suggested taking the courts out of the process when it comes to deciding which existing abortion restrictions on the books are impacted by the passage of the amendment.
We will catch up with what’s going on at the statehouse with the implementation of the abortion and reproductive health amendment to begin Wednesday’s “Sound of Ideas.
Then, we turn our attention to PrEP treatments. Since the 1980s, when the epidemic first began, AIDS, which is caused by the HIV virus, has taken the lives of 40 million people. But the days of HIV/AIDS meaning a death sentence are long gone.
In fact, now medical professionals say that ending the transmission of HIV completely is medically possible with the universal treatment of a drug called PrEP, or Pre-exposure Prophylaxis.
We will talk about universal PrEP with Neighborhood Family Practice, a multi localtion health center on Cleveland's west side.
To end the hour, the opioid overdose epidemic has had a devastating impact on Ohio. Last year, nearly 5,000 drug overdose deaths were recorded by the Ohio Department of Health.
The synthetic opioid fentanyl figures prominently in those deaths. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and it's increasingly showing up in other street drugs helping to drive accidental overdoses.
In a new perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine, a Cleveland Clinic doctor and his co-author call for easier fentanyl testing, especially in emergency care and hospital situations. The doctor joins us to discuss the topic.
Guests:
-Karen Kasler, Statehouse News Bureau Chief, Ohio Public Radio
-Lisa Navracruz, M.D., HIV Primary Care Program Director, Neighborhood Family Practice
-Brittani Flory, HIV Prevention Nurse, Neighborhood Family Practice
-Brian Barnett, MD, Psychiatrist, Cleveland Clinic Behavioral Health
Watch the discussion in the player below.
