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Sharp rises in overdose deaths nationally coincided with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rural Appalachia, known for high rates of substance use and barriers to health care in general, was suspected to be disproportionately impacted in terms of recovery supports such as 12-step recovery meetings. This study investigated the availability of recovery meetings in South Central Appalachia before and after COVID-19 lockdowns. The number of confirmed recovery meetings was compared before and after COVID-19 lockdowns by geographic location (i.e., rural/nonrural and medium metro/small metro/micropolitan/noncore). Recovery meeting data were systematically collected through interviews with community contacts, reviewing social media and websites, making phone calls, and sending emails and surveys and updated longitudinally. There was no significant change in the number of meetings from pre- (n = 189) to post-COVID-19 (n = 178). There was no significant shift in meeting location when dichotomizing by rural/nonrural classification, chi2(1) = 2.76, p = .097, pi = -0.087. Chi-square test of independence did reveal a significant change in number of recovery meetings by location when using four location classifications, chi2(3) = 7.97, p = .047, Cramer's V = 0.147. There was a noteworthy rise in the meetings in small metro (36.5%-51.1%), with all other locations declining. The establishment and reestablishment of recovery meetings in rural communities should be prioritized to address the longstanding scarcity of recovery resources in rural locations, recent decline in such support, and the rise in overdose deaths. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement This study highlights a significant barrier to recovery from problematic substance use in rural areas. Strategically establishing recovery meetings in areas with few or no meetings and facilitating access through addressing transportation is critical. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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[...]the most recognized definition, as espoused by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration fSAMHSA. 2014). is the response of an individual to an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is perceived as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening. Examples of circumstances that are potentially traumatic include emotional, physical, or sexual abuse;sudden separation from a loved one;childhood neglect;family members with a mental health condition;poverty;and discrimination (Center for Health Care Strategies. 2017). Findings of the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study indicated that exposure to trauma increases the likelihood of health-risk behaviors as well as a person's lifetime risk for chronic health conditions such as autoimmune disorders, depression, heart disease, liver disease, lung disease, obesity, sexually transmitted diseases, and substance use disorders. (2022) assert that there is a significant need to incorporate traumainformed practices within graduate nursing curriculum to address mental health concerns that graduate nursing students struggle with during their programs of study.
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It is crucial to understand COVID-19 vaccine uptake and attitudes among young adult cannabis users given the lowest vaccination rates among young adults and negative association between cannabis use and willingness to get vaccinated. 18–21-year-old and 26–33-year-old cohorts of cannabis users, recruited in California, were surveyed about the COVID-19 vaccine uptake/attitudes between March-August 2021. Cannabis use/demographic differences were investigated by vaccination status. Vaccine attitudes data were categorized and presented descriptively. 44.4% of the older and 71.8% of the younger cohorts were vaccinated. Non-Hispanic Black/African American race/ethnicity, lack of health insurance, and medicinal orientation towards cannabis use were negatively associated with vaccine receipt within the older cohort. For both cohorts, top reasons for vaccine hesitancy and rejection were concerns about speed of development, potential side effects, natural immunity, and lack of trust of vaccines. Our results highlight greater vaccine hesitance/rejection and need for targeted interventions among mid-20's-early-30's cannabis users.
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In 1990, the seroprevalence of antibody against hepatitis C virus (anti- HCV) in Taiwan was first documented to be 0.95% in volunteer blood donors, 90% in hemophiliacs, and 81% in parenteral drug abusers. The risk factors for HCV infection in Taiwan include iatrogenic transmission (medical injection, hemodialysis, acupuncture, and blood transfusion), tattooing, and sexual transmission. The long-term risk of hepatic and non-hepatic diseases has been well-documented by REVEL-HCV study. A national program of antiviral therapy for chronic viral hepatitis was launched in Taiwan in 2003. Mortality rates of end-stage liver diseases decreased continuously from 2000-2003 to 2008-2011 in all age and gender groups. When the World Health Assembly adopted the Global Health Sector Strategy on Viral Hepatitis in 2016, National program to eliminate hepatitis C was very carefully evaluated. It became a consensus to reach the WHO's 2030 goals in 2025. Taiwan Hepatitis C Policy Guideline 2018-2025 was approved and published at the beginning of 2019. There are triple focuses of hepatitis C elimination in Taiwan including (1) therapy spearheads prevention, (2) screening supports therapy, and (3) prevention secures outcome. A total of US$1.7 billion will be allocated from 2017 to 2025 for the elimination of HCV. The coverage of HCV screening and treatment has been increasing significantly since 2017. The HCV screening coverage was almost 100% for dialytic patients, 96% for HIV-infected patients, 65% for patients under opioid substitution treatment, 63% for patients in the pre-end-stage renal disease care program, 57% for patients in the early chronic kidney disease care program, 52% for patients in diabetes care program, 39% for prisoners, and 38% for adults aged 45-79 years old in the general population by April 30, 2020. The budget to cover the cost of DAA increased from US$101 million in 2017 to US$219 million in 2019. The number of chronic hepatitis C patients receiving DAA therapy increased from 9,538 in 2017, 19,549 in 2018, to 45,806 in 2019. However, the number of DAA-treated CHC patients reduced to 36,159 in 2020 and 20,559 in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The cure rate based on SVR12 was 96.8% in 2017, 97.4% in 2018, over 98.6% after 2019. It is expected that Taiwan will achieve WHO's HCV elimination goal by 2025.
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Stakeholder and consumer participation is generally seen as a critical part of effective alcohol policy making as it has a direct impact on policy implementation. In the advent of COVID-19, the views and experiences of stakeholders and consumers were integral to how countries responded to the virus. The involvement of alcohol stakeholders and consumers raises critical questions about policy making practices. Using Grounded Theory (GT) methods amongst 20 drinkers and six alcohol stakeholders, I examined the views and experiences of stakeholders and alcohol consumers in Botswana during COVID-19. I identified two interrelated core categories of Balancing the Drinking Act and Problematic Youth Drinking that were prominent as the country dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. First, I argue that balancing the drinking act suggests the need for government to balance alcohol regulation with the needs of drinkers. Second, I highlight that problematic youth drinking relates to an emerging yet consistent belief that young people in Botswana are collectively responsible for alcohol "problems." These key themes center consumer and stakeholder participation in alcohol policy development. Moreover, the current analysis demonstrates the interplay between alcohol use and prohibition during COVID-19, and how it might be mediated by cultural scripts used by consumers and stakeholders in Botswana.
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Background: Substance use is an understudied aspect of cystic fibrosis (CF) care. Even casual use of drugs or alcohol may reduce compliance with complicated treatment plans, worsen existing conditions associated with CF, or cause potential drug interactions. To understand the need for mitigation mechanisms for risky substance use in a CF population, we studied the prevalence of substance use in our adult CF clinic population to characterize relationships between substance use and health status. Method(s): In our large academic CF center, we performed a retrospective chart ion of 420 patients over a 6-year period (2015-2021). Clinical staff annually administer the Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST-10), Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), and General Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) to assess drug use, alcohol use, depression, and anxiety symptoms, respectively. Demographic characteristics, lung function (percentage predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1pp)), and anxiety and depression symptom screening scores were recorded. Because substance use can change over time, we counted each assessment date as an independent observation (n = 1434). The chi-square test (Table 1) was conducted in R/RStudio [1] to assess for associations between self-reported substance use and symptoms of depression and anxiety. Because of insufficient data, aggregate datawere used to describe the presence (PHQ-9 or GAD-7 >= 10) or absence (PHQ-9 or GAD-7 < 10) of symptoms of depression and anxiety. Result(s): Positive scores for risky use were defined as a DAST score of 1 or higher and an AUDIT score of 8 or hither. Eighty-three of 326 patients (25%) met criteria for risky substance use on at least one observation. Therewas a slight male predominance (54.2%) and wide age distribution (mean age 30 +/- 7, range 20-55);Thirty (36.1%) had a higher AUDIT score, 34 (40.9%) had a high DAST score, and 19 (22.9%) had high scores on both.We selected 2019 to evaluate single-year prevalence of positive screenings to avoid the impact of COVID. In 2019, 29 patients had at least one positive screening result (DAST,15/203, 7.3%;AUDIT, 24/193,12%;both,10/193, 5.2%). In the 6- year dataset, we did not find a statistically significant association between symptoms of depression and anxiety and indication of drug or alcohol use in self-reported users (355 observations). Conclusion(s): According to a 2020 national survey of healthy Americans, 20.8% have used illicit drugs at least once in the past year, and 10.2% meet criteria for alcohol use disorder [2], compared with 7.3% of patients in our 2019 data who have used drugs (n = 15) and 12% (n = 24) who indicated risky alcohol use. In this review, positive screening scores on the DAST and AUDIT were not associated with degree of symptoms of depression and anxiety, suggesting that substance use and symptoms of depression and anxiety were not temporally associated with each other. Future work will include analysis of the relationship between substance use and mental health in the larger University of North Carolina clinic population and linear regression to evaluate possible explanatory variables for substance use in this populationCopyright © 2022, European Cystic Fibrosis Society. All rights reserved
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The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 transformed daily life worldwide. To minimize the spread of the virus, many governments imposed a lockdown and physical distancing measures. Schools, universities, restaurants, shops, and businesses all closed. Research has shown that the mandatory stay-at-home orders associated with the COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected the mental health of parents, children, and youth. This chapter considers how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the mental health of youth behind bars in the United States and in other countries. The longstanding impression of prisons is that the people in custody are violent, dangerous, and deserve to be incarcerated. Even incarcerated youth are viewed by many in society as super-predators. Most incarcerated youth have significant mental health needs. Incarcerated youth often suffer from a variety of mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation. When incarcerated youth show symptoms of COVID-19 or are diagnosed with it, juvenile correctional facilities are faced with few options for quarantine that do not resemble solitary confinement. Because of concern regarding the high transmissibility of COVID-19 in juvenile prisons, most prison administrators suspend visitors or greatly restrict the number of people entering the facilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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Background and aims: A wide variety of pathological conditions involve the lungs. In autopsy, the lungs are examined for disease, injury and other findings suggesting cause of death or related changes.Aims & Objectives: The present study aimed to study the histomorphological spectrum of lung lesions at autopsy and to assess the frequency of different types of lesions;and to associate histomorphological changes with cause of death.Material and Methods: It was a one-year observational study conducted in the Department of Pathology, Govt. Medical College, Jammu. Lung tissue pieces from all medicolegal autopsies received were fixed, examined grossly, processed;paraffin embedded sections obtained were stained with Hematoxylin and Eosin stain and examined under microscope. Findings were recorded and tabulated. Result(s): Out of 264 cases, males were predominantly affected (84%);median age was 38 years. The various changes observed were congestion (68%), edema (45.4%), pneumonia (5%), granulomatous inflammation (3%), diffuse alveolar damage (1.5%), haemorrhage (14.4%), interstitial changes (60%), malaria (0.4%) and malignancy (0.4%). Natural deaths were the commonest cause (75, 28%) followed by asphyxial deaths (65, 24.6%). Conclusion(s): Histopathological examination of lung autopsies highlights many incidental findings, establishes underlying cause of death, serves as a learning tool and also holds scope for detection of newer diseases.Copyright © 2023 JK Science.
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PURPOSE: Knowing and analyzing the characteristics and trends of forensic toxicology cases in a certain area is particularly important for a local government to establish an effective prevention and control system. The purpose of this work was to summarize data from forensic toxicology cases received by the Academy of Forensic Sciences (AFS) in 2021. METHODS: As requested by the police or according to the details of cases, samples were systematically screened or analyzed by various methods. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry were used to identify medicinal drugs, drugs of abuse, pesticides, poison gases, etc. RESULTS: AFS received a total of 17,758 cases in 2021, of which 314 cases underwent autopsy. The main cause of death was sudden death, and the manner of death was mainly accident. Among 13,744 drug abuse cases, the number of positive cases was 1721, with a positive rate of 12.5%, and synthetic cannabinoids were the most frequently detected substances. In 3640 traffic cases, 85.3% of drivers were suspected of drunk driving. In 103 poisoning cases, hydrogen sulfide poisoning and pesticide suicide account for a large proportion. In drug-facilitated crimes, zolpidem was the most frequently tested component. In 55 case of dog poisonings, the main poisons were cyanides and succinylcholine, and the main poisoning tools were poisonous baits and poisonous syringe darts. CONCLUSIONS: This study profiles the toxicological characteristics of forensic toxicological cases conducted at the AFS in 2021 and provides a scientific basis for poisoning cases and drug abuse prevention.
Subject(s)
Pesticides , Poisoning , Substance-Related Disorders , Suicide , Animals , Dogs , Forensic Toxicology/methods , Retrospective Studies , Forensic Medicine , Poisoning/diagnosisABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic led to increase in mental health problems and substance misuse. Yet, little is known about its impact on rates of deaths of despair (death by suicide and drug overdose). Our objective was to determine the impact of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders on deaths of despair using population-level data. We hypothesized that the longer duration of stay-at-home orders would increase rates of deaths of despair. METHODS: Utilizing quarterly suicide and drug-overdose mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics from January 2019 through December 2020, we estimated fixed-effects models to examine the effects of the duration of stay-at-home orders as differentially implemented in 51 jurisdictions in the United States on each outcome. RESULTS: Controlling for seasonal patterns, the duration of jurisdictional-level stay-at-home order was positively associated with drug-overdose death rates. The duration of stay-at-home orders was not associated with suicide rates when adjusting for calendar quarter. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest an increase in age-adjusted drug-overdose death rates in the United States from 2019 to 2020 possibly attributable to the duration of jurisdictional COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. This effect may have operated through various mechanisms, including increases in economic distress and reduced access to treatment programs when stay-at-home orders were in effect.
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This article focuses on the impact that the social and health-related crisis caused by COVID 19 produced on the public-run community service, whose workers do their jobs from a territorial approach of drug abuse in vulnerable areas in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (AMBA), Argentina. By means of interviews to these workers, the aim is to describe and analize the experience of having worked in territory during the social and health-related critical context caused by the pandemic COVID 19 as well as understand the individual and collective impact on the teams. In this context, some issues are raised as to the impact produced by the sudden bursting of the pandemic on the territorial work, the strategies developed when restructuring working modalities, and also which contributions can be provided by a system of collective reflexivity in these contexts.
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Purpose: Anchored with turbulence emanating from the COVID-19 pandemic, the work environment has become more stressful with debilitating effects on the well-being of employees. Employees rely on varying means of coping including drug abuse. However, the association between drug abuse and suicidal thoughts among employees in Ghana is unknown. Therefore, this study sought to examine the relationship between drug abuse and suicidal thoughts among employees in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach: In a cross-sectional survey, this study purposively sampled 470 employees from three sectors of the Ghanaian economy (telecommunication, banking and manufacturing). The data was analysed using the multivariate analysis (MANOVA), Pearson's r test and hierarchical regression. Findings: Analysis of data revealed a positive relationship between drug abuse and suicidal thoughts, indicating that drug abuse is a risk factor for suicidal thoughts. Besides, it was also revealed that banking sector employees have a higher risk of having suicidal thoughts than employees in the telecommunication and manufacturing sectors. Practical implications: Managers of organisations need to redesign work to embrace the challenging circumstances brought about as a result of COVID-19 and post-COVID implications. The work environment needs to be more supportive to shield employees from the physical and emotional demands of work during and after this period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today than ever, investment in the implementation of employee-assisted programmes (EAPs) and employee well-being programmes (EWPs) to equip employees with the needed skills to cope with stressful conditions has been more than justified. Originality/value: From a broader perspective, this study identifies drug abuse as a key risk factor for suicidal thoughts among employees, thereby highlighting the fact that smoking cessation programs and drug management therapies are an integral part of well-being programmes aimed at establishing equilibrium and gradually creating a wide gap between employees and suicidal thoughts. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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The drug abuse epidemic has been on the rise in the past few years, particularly after the start of COVID-19 pandemic. Our preliminary observations on Reddit alone show that discussions on drugs from 2018 to 2020 increased between a range of 45% to 200%, and so has the number of unique users participating in those discussions. Existing efforts focused on utilizing social media to distinguish potential drug abuse chats from unharmful chats regardless of what drug is being abused. Others focused on understanding the trends and causes of drug abuse from social media. To this end, we introduce PRISTINE (opioid crisis detection on reddit), our work dynamically detects-and extracts evolving misleading drug names from Reddit comments using reinforced Dynamic Query Expansion (DQE) and constructs a textual Graph Convolutional Network with the aid of powerful pre-trained embeddings to detect which type of drug class a Reddit comment corresponds to. Further, we perform extensive experiments to investigate the effectiveness of our model. © 2022 IEEE.
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One of the biggest global public health crisis began in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019. That emergency was the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 and the disease COVID-19, a highly transmissible acute respiratory syndrome. The pandemic declaration by the WHO in March 2020 caused the world to take on several measures to combat and contain the virus. Initially, social isolation and lockdown were the main initiatives, as there were no forms of treatment or prevention of the disease. These restrictive measures generate a change in the habit of the population that triggered serious physical and psychological impairments. One of the consequences was the increase in the use of substances of abuse and, consequently, substance use disorder, including tobacco. During the pandemic, cigarette consumption increased from 10 to 30% worldwide, whereas smoking is the main cause of preventable death and a risk factor for several diseases. Along with alcohol, nicotine has a greater addictive power than illicit drugs. Substance use disorders and COVID-19 have a synergistic effect, in this way, we seek to integrate neurochemical, cognitive and behavioral aspects that led to increased consumption and/or relapse in nicotine consumption and the used therapy.
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Many consumers, both youth and adults, are not accessing appropriate substance use treatment, necessitating the need for mobile response interventions. Choices Coordinated Care Solutions has developed a mobile response model that builds on Systems of Care values to engage consumers in intensive care coordination utilizing the evidence-based Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment approach and core values of wraparound. The choices emergency response team (CERT) model is an integrated, coordinated service delivery approach, relying on the skills and experience of its qualified staff to work with consumers in order to effectively identify the inherent strengths that all people have and to use those strengths to design innovative, trauma-informed approaches to treatment. A strong relationship with a broad network of stakeholders throughout the state and southeast Indiana serves as a foundation for the implementation of mobile response. These relationships with local resources empower consumers in their recovery journey. The evolution of the CERT model to strategically integrate technology, especially with incarcerated or justice-involved consumers, became an essential asset during the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020. The necessity of virtual consumer engagement has created opportunities for these recovery communities that may endure even after the pandemic is resolved. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement Crises related to substance use create significant burdens on individuals, families, and communities. Mobile response facilitates access to substance use treatments. This article describes key components of an emergency response model and how technology played an essential role in engaging consumers during the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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The coronavirus pandemic has negatively affected people of all social strata, and continues to do so, but its effect has been the most severe on members of the most precarious populations. In this exploratory study conducted in Switzerland, the specific situation of homeless people, a particularly vulnerable population, is examined from a criminological perspective. In total, we surveyed 32 homeless individuals: 14 during the first wave of the pandemic (March-September 2020) and 18 during the second wave (December 2020-March 2021). Results corroborate that the pandemic has had adverse effects on the respondents – both socioeconomic and psychological. Most of the participants do not use drugs and, overall, those who reported drug use did not report an increase during the epidemic. The occurrence of both victimization and offending is low among the participants. Ethical and methodological considerations such as the minimization of social desirability bias, satisficing, as well as the recruitment of difficult-to-reach participants and data collection more broadly during a pandemic are discussed.
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A new type of coronavirus, causing an infectious disease called COVID-19, with a high rate of transmissibility has spread around the world. The population was told to stay in their homes, in social isolation, so as not to act as vectors of virus transmission to more vulnerable individuals. The pandemic of the new coronavirus has brought social, economic, and psychological effects all over the world. Although these are necessary measures, the impacts of social isolation on the mental health of the population must be taken into consideration. This study aims to reflect on the effects of quarantine and the increase of addictive behaviors in this period of pandemic, bringing the implications of these for the mental and physical health of the population. This is a narrative review of articles, reports and book chapters published since the beginning of the pandemic, the main databases being Medline, Scielo and Scopus Elsevier. The findings point out that quarantine, has negatively impacted both the mental and physical health of the population, triggering psychological symptoms, such as anxiety, depression and addictive behavior, in addition, can arouse feelings such as sadness and anger, and may be punctual or extend after the end of isolation. However, there are strategies that, when adopted together, can minimize the psychological effects of isolation and make this moment less unhealthy. In this sense, this study highlights the importance of offering interdisciplinary treatments and effective public health strategies in public health systems, so that they can meet the needs of the population by providing comprehensive care and treatment, and by considering short, medium, and long-term actions to prevent addictive behaviors.
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Given the frequency with which substance use and mental health disorders co-occur, it is incumbent on mental health professionals to understand the implications of substance use on the assessment, treatment, and outcomes of mental health disorders. The 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health revealed that only 6.9% of adults with concurrent disorders received treatment that addressed both conditions, over half (51.9%) of adults with concurrent disorders did not receive any treatment at all, 38.2% received mental health treatment only, and 2.9% received treatment specifically targeting their substance use (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2017). Additionally, a recent review of alcohol use following the global crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic reported that increases in alcohol use were partially mediated by increases in mental health distress (Gonçalves et al., 2020). [...]it is likely that the rates of concurrent disorders will increase due to the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. [...]many psychologists are already trained in the therapeutic modalities that have been shown to be evidence-based for concurrent mental health and substance use disorders, such as motivational interviewing, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and trauma-informed care (Institute of Medicine, 2015).
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Background We aimed to evaluate the incidence of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in New Orleans in the sixteen years after Hurricane Katrina. Methods This was a single-center, retrospective study performed at Tulane University Health Sciences Center of patients admitted for AMI during two years prior to Hurricane Katrina and sixteen years after Hurricane Katrina. The pre-Katrina and post-Katrina cohorts were compared according to pre-specified demographic and clinical data. Results In the sixteen-year post-Katrina period, there were 3696 admissions for AMI out of a total census of 128,276 (2.9%) compared to 150 admissions out of a census of 21,079 (0.7%) in the pre-Katrina group (p<0.0001). The post-Katrina group had a higher prevalence of known coronary artery disease (CAD) (43.8% vs. 30.7%, p<0.0001), diabetes mellitus (40.7% vs. 28.7%, p<0.002), hypertension (80.1% vs. 74.0%, p<0.05), hyperlipidemia (54.2% vs. 44.7%, p<0.0001), smoking (54.2% vs. 39.3%, p<0.0002), drug abuse (18.7% vs. 6.7%, p<0.0002), and psychiatric disease (15.3% vs. 6.7%, p<0.0004). The post-Katrina group was more often prescribed aspirin (49.6% vs. 31.3%, p<0.0001), beta-blocker (46.9% vs. 34.0%, p<0.004), ACE inhibitor or ARB (51.9% vs. 36.0%, p<0.0004), and statin (52.6% vs. 28.0%, p<0.0001) but with higher medication non-adherence (15.8% vs. 7.3%, p<0.0001). The post-Katrina patients were also more likely to be unemployed (75.6% vs 22.7%, p<0.0001) and non-married (56.3% vs. 52.7%, p<0.0001). Rates of STEMI were lower in the post-Katrina group (29.1% vs 42.0%, p<0.002). There was no significant difference in terms of sex, being uninsured, or prior coronary artery bypass grafting. Four patients were COVID positive in the post-Katrina cohort. Conclusion There was a 4-fold increase in the incidence of AMI sixteen years after Hurricane Katrina. Psychosocial, behavioral, and traditional CAD risk factors were significantly higher among the post-Katrina group. These findings add to the growth of literature demonstrating the adverse cardiovascular outcomes that occur after a natural disaster. Further research is needed to explain the underlying mechanisms to help diminish future cardiac morbidity.Copyright © 2023 American College of Cardiology Foundation