Benchmark to National Health Goals
to prevent unintentional overdoses

A Healthy People 2020 identifies several goals regarding substance and medication use.

1. Reduce the past-year nonmedical use of prescription drugs - pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants, sedatives and any psychotherapeutic drug. A target goal has only been determined for any psychotherapeutic drug.

• Baseline: In 2008, 6.1% of persons 12 years and older reported using any psychotherapeutic drug for nonmedical purposes.
• Target: Decrease this to 5.5%; a 10 percent improvement.

What You Can Do

1. Assessing the current rates of prescription medicine abuse and misuse may be difficult. Use the HP 2020 baseline as your benchmark.
2. Determine what support resources are available for your employees and their families.  Communicate this information to employees.
3. Evaluate your efforts and your resources. If possible, improve availability of resources, based on best practices, to help prevent medication misuse and abuse. 

Learn more about the Healthy People 2020 goals for unintentional overdoses.

Learn how to develop a program to prevent unintentional overdoses.