In Baltimore City, where Dr. Leana Wen serves as Health Commissioner, more people died from overdose last year than died from homicide. Dr. Wen has declared opioid abuse a public health emergency, and has led the charge to expand the use of naloxone, also called Narcan, that completely reverses the effect of an overdose. Dr. Wen speaks about this medication’s potential to combat America’s overdose epidemic. Her message is simple: nobody should die from an entirely treatable ailment; we should all be able to save a life.
Dr. Leana Wen is the Baltimore City Health Commissioner. An emergency physician and patient and community advocate, she leads the oldest health department in the United States, formed in 1793, with an annual budget of $130 million and over 1,000 employees. Dr. Wen has been a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, a Clinical Fellow at Harvard, and a consultant with the World Health Organization and the Brookings Institution.