Dont want to say learning too much but thinking too much about the other side. I would like to start by stating a special welcome to president bill clinton. Several policymakers are leading the way in health reform, including car was meant Elijah Cummings and both will be joining us in the program. Also any audience, our condiment, john, and representation from the senator ben cardinss office. Finally, i would like to extend an especially warm welcome to senator whom we are now protocol [applause] proud to call [applause] who we are proud to call one of our own. Thank you so much for being here. We are indeed honored to be working with the Clinton Foundation to bring us todaysummit on americas opioid debt epidemic. It is a National Crisis that needs involvement from public and private organizations and individual citizens. 100 die fromarly opioid overdose. The the past 15 years, death rate from opioid overdose has tripled. The causes are complex. Chronic pain are prescribed opioids instead of safer and less addict if. Addictive. Often, far too few people have access to evidencebased addiction treatment. The Bloomberg School leadership stretching back nearly 50 years, a training and advocated for federally funded Treatment Programs. Two centers. One for drug safety and effectiveness. Our collaboration with the Clinton Foundation began in may when president bill clinton led a town hall focused on the rising rate of injury and death. The resulting synergy, National Leaders in the private sector, paved the way for a yearlong effort to identify best practices. Based on the initial engagement school, the bloomberg and the Clinton Foundation produced a document that identified a path forward and framed the problem as a severe Public Health issue. The document called for scaling up, resisting evidencebased prevention to prevent future loss of life. Despite such efforts, we have a long way to go opioid deaths reach a long term high in 2016 and the numbers keep rising. Despite recent announcements by the white house, our country has not yet addressed the real need for urgent action and a true commitment for resources. Released by just the Bloomberg School in the Clinton Foundation entitled, the Opioid Epidemic, describes 10 pillars, including implementing prescribing guidelines, advanced engineering solutions, as well as combating stigma. Been shownegies have to work in today, you will hear from experts and advocates to Work Together by further developing and implementing the strategies and generating new evidence. Ut we need your help please lets Work Together to stop this epidemic. I am honored to introduce congressman Elijah Cummings. Born and raised in baltimore, congressman cummings has represented marylands seventh Congressional District since 1996. A member on the House Committee for oversight and government reform and serves on government care reform. A chair on he has helped Shape National policy on drug addition addiction, and access to affordable medication. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to congressman Elijah Cummings. [applause] congressman cummings good morning, everyone. It is my honor and my privilege to be here. For your thank you very kind words. More importantly, i thank you for your work. This. To do family andf my certainly on behalf of generations of cummings yet unborn, want to thank Johns Hopkins for taking good care of me. [applause] rep. Cummings having spent almost two months in a hospital a few blocks from here, after a heart procedure, i must say i have grown to love Johns Hopkins even more. Doctors and staff , to the cleaning people, to the cafeteria folks, everybody , iociated with this campus thank you for changing the trajectory of my destiny. I truly appreciate it. Thank you. I want to welcome our thisnguished panel to summit on our nations opioid crisis. Always good to see my good friend, my mentor, and my. Enator i understand john is in the room. Congressman, im glad you are here. And mustr we now face is more now than ever. And other periods drugs, were involved in more , 64,000 last year deaths. In maryland, at least 2008 9 People Fairly overdosed in 2016, up from 2015. This is stark evidence of how human devastation are expanding exponentially. Bipartisan that knowledge meant that the national Public Health emergency crisis does exist. But resistance remains in both the white house and congress, to taking old action. President is year, the has his own opioid commission, led by governor chris christie, recommended that the president declare a national emergency. As all of you know, last week, the president declared a Public Health emergency, a good first unlock anyoes not additional federal funding to confront the crisis headon. The Commission Also recommended something any additional federal funding elsee president authorized the negotiateof hhs to lower prices with blocks on, lifesaving drugs that reverse the effects of opioid overdoses that im sure we will hear a lot advocate a stark right now, our people the front lines of the epidemic cannot. Fford to stock up that is why last month, i let 50 house members send a letter to President Trump asking him to adopt this recommendation. Day tim. T ask him, we unfortunately, the president did not even mention the word in his announcement last week. Finally, as you all know, the president and Congressional Republicans have spent years trying to repeal the Affordable Care act. Expansion,nt though medicaid provides peoples to three and 10 who struggle with opioid addiction. If we are going to respond to the epidemic, we need your evidencebased research and your continued active engagement in the public debate here we must encourage the president to follow his own recommendation to and the ability availability and reduce the cost. We must press insurance to eliminate the buyers in favor of opioidbased painkillers and we must challenge our friends in expand Public Health funding, preserve medicare, and safeguard medicaid. Know ouryou already response to the Public Health a test for our community. It is also a test for the entire society. My good friend from maryland, delaney, saidhn what flies direct to the current crisis. It is one of those come when you hear something, i wish i had come up with that. It is so true. I think about this all the time because it is so true. He said the cost of doing nothing is not nothing. Tweet that. [laughter] rep. Cummings think about it. The cost of doing nothing is not nothing. Me repeat it. The cost of doing nothing is not nothing. We have seen it over and over again. I think all of you for being here today. We will fight and overcome. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you very much for your leadership on this issue. And those inspiring words for us today. I am thrilled to introduce and welcome back to our School President bill clinton, founder and for chair of the Clinton Foundation and former president of the United States. After leaving the white house in 2001, president clinton established the Clinton Foundation to build more resilient communities by improving local health, strengthening local communities, and protecting the environment. In 2002, he launched the initiative to negotiate prices for hiv and aids medication to extend access to 11. 5 Million People in over 70 countries. An achievement many thought was impossible. A similar strategy, president clinton negotiated National Partnerships with two pharmaceutical companies to vide an Affordable Community groups, Public Safety organizations, and schools and universities. His goal is to cut Prescription Drug abuse deaths in half over the next five years, saving approximately 10,000 lives. Done through Strategic Partnerships that raise consumer and Public Awareness, advanced business chains, and importantly, mobilize communities. Please join me and giving a warm welcome to president bill clinton. [applause] pres. Clinton thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. All, dean mckenzie, thank you for having us back at the Bloomberg School for public ongoingnd for the partnership we have had confronting the Opioid Epidemic. I want to thank congressman cummings for his remarks and his leadership on this and many. Ther issues he said senator mikulski was his role model and he certainly proved it the last couple of years. Barbara was on a short list we kept at the white house. It was called the just say yes list. She asked for something, you knew sooner or later, she would cavein because she was like a dog biting your leg and so i said, save a lot of time. Figure out what she wants and say yes and we will be able to go back to work. Glad to see you are here and im glad you are teaching here. I want to say thanks to two other people for their inspiration. One is Mike Bloomberg for funding this effort. Got a lot of money, i know, but he could have done other things with it. He was a great Public Health mayor of new york and this is a great school. The other person i want to thank is my daughter, chelsea, who teaches Public Health in family in thes my an expert on anything relating to the Public Health policy. And who urged me for years to get involved when most people were not paying any attention to it. I want to think mostly all of you for being here and agreeing to take action. Latest data says that in 2016, more than 64,000 people in this country died of drug overdose. Opioid related. If the data is confirmed, and we have no reason to believe it wont he, that means last year, more people died of opioid than therug overdoses numbers of deaths from the aids crisis at the peak before it was treated, then from gun related homicides, or from automobile accidents. Opioid related deaths are now the leading cause of deaths for americans under the age of 50. Virtually all of us know someone in the family that has lost a loved one. Hillary and i have five friends who have lost their children. Frome learned a great deal these families. One of them had a son working for hillary when he died and it worked for me. Program at George Washington university. He was a very smart man but nobody ever told him you could not pop a pill to get a buzz after drinking five beers and go to sleep, or you might never wake up. Everybody has got stories like that. Epidemic hasow the grown like wildfire in small towns and rural areas with no ,ublic Health Infrastructure where people dont know what to if they know. It human tragedy. A the cdc estimates more than 70 to don a year to continue so little in such a fractured way on this problem. Treatment. Yet, for all the noise made about it, the externa efforts being made by people with nothing. I mean nothing. A halfn ohio a year and ago, a little town in southwest ohio. Itas proud of looking at because it was totally rebuilt, and an early 19thcentury town. All the beautiful buildings were because of investments secured partially under the tax credit, the last completely Bipartisan Initiative designed to give people who invest in small towns and rural areas with high unemployment income. That was the good news. Wasgood news further was it the most beautiful building in town and had been given over by the city to doctors who voluntarily came there so they could practice and appellation. The doctor got her medical degree in new york i walked out and across the street, a woman waving frantically at me, please come over here, so i go over and i only own one asset of any value, a used car. I sold it and renovated that office. What youre seeing is the only facility in this town. A woman had just died of a heroin overdose, the poor mans version of opioid addiction as we travel down, and three women who are recovering heroin addicts. She said, im happy to do this. I know nothing about it. I get whatever help i can and it is all we got. I am glad one of our panelists is the head of Public Health in baltimore, which had the first Public Health m of any city in the United States, going back to the late 18th century but in many places, Community Health networks have been allowed to atrophy. Extended to embrace this mission. This is like a good news bad news story to me. The good news is this is the first drug epidemic where we act like a grownup country and treated like a Public Health care problem instead of a criminal justice problem. [applause] pres. Clinton it is a good thing. Some cynics have said that is because it started in a small town of rural white people before it spread to the cities. There might be something to that, but i think the more likely explanation is that this is the first epidemic we have had killing this many people that had a delivery chain. The problem is, as we all know, the more we get into cheap the more likely we are to see more violent Delivery Systems as people fight over guaranteed money. Coming to as theater near you, whatever your color is, whatever your politics are. That brings me to the bad news. It is a Public Health problem and we recognize it. Good for us. We are growing up as a country and seeing all of these people as people. The bad news is there is a woefully inadequate Public Health response not properly corrugated with Law Enforcement, with the treatment community, with you name it. What we are here to do today is to figure out what to do next. The next panel after hours, what we will try to do is identify what many of you already know but the general public may not, which is where are we right now, what is being done that is good, what are the gaps. Then we go to the second panel. The analysts will discuss the report we are releasing today, the Clinton HealthMatters Initiative along with the Bloomberg School called from evidence to impact. Saying weonal way of know what the heck is wrong and we know what we need to do. Somethingwe do allowing physicians to effectively treat those suffering from addiction much better than some of them are allowed to now because all of to barriers, you know, expanding coverage and proven helps,of to changing the way Health Care Professionals and employers an advocate actually talk about , so we can reduce stigma and get people out of the is at quicker because it. Errible problem we have been working on this since 2012 as dean mckenzie told you. Good progress. I specially want to thank for offering to give free packages to every college campus, put them online, to every high school in america, as they can with limited production. They have been great partners. I think improving access is still important. There are debates about that. All i know is we have got a lot of people dying from drug overdoses and most of them are still opioid related. If you can save a life, you ought to do it. Say threebriefly things we will do from here forward and then bring the panel up. We have known for a long time that stigma plays a major role in preventing individuals and families from seeking treatment or accessing provision sources. In partnership with facing addiction, see hmi will launch a communication strategy designed to tell his people to get over it. Property the proper Public Health word is to empower them but what you have known, a couple of people who have lost their kids, i think we should dispense with the niceties. It is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a health problem. We have to hammer that. Employers need to hammer it and , get helpto say no, to save your life, your family, and your kids future. We need the same message to go out everywhere in a very straightforward way. Second, we have known that Law Enforcement chief, thank you for being here and for what you have done. Shareal justice experts similar goals but do not coordinate as you should and do not cooperate. A simple,have congress has of strategy even in places we take the money being spent and spend more effectively. We will work with the institute to reduce opioid overdoses by people who have come in contact with the criminal justice system, by having we can play a role in this. Finally, the Committee Health in severalworks count