Medication for opioid use disorder is available via telehealth. One Georgia mom hopes it saves lives

Caption

Cammie Wolf Rice holds up a photo of her and her son, Christopher Wolf, who died by opioid overdose in 2016.

Credit: Sofi Gratas/GPB News

Cammie Wolf Rice understood when her son, Christopher Wolf, needed pain medication after surgery, but she said no one warned them of the dangers of the opioids.

The then-17-year-old went home with 90 oxycodone pills.

"We continued to get prescription after prescription and it completely hijacked his brain," said Rice, who lives in Atlanta. "He fought substance misuse for 14-plus years and lost his battle Feb. 26, 2016."

After losing Christopher to opioid use disorder (OUD), Rice founded CWC Alliance, a nonprofit working to prevent opioid addiction.

Caption

Cammie Wolf Rice, founder of CWC Alliance, at the Georgia State Capitol on Dec. 20, 2024.

Credit: Sofi Gratas/GPB News

Rice wants support for parents who often don't even know what they don't know about treating OUD. The kind she didn't have with Christopher.

"I woke up one day and I said, 'You know, we got to stop it before it starts in hospitals. And there's no coach when you're having a health crisis in hospitals,'" she said. "So we've developed a new position. It's at patient bedside. It's called a life care specialist."

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Buprenorphine is a federally controlled narcotic medication that lowers the risk of opioid-related overdose and death, and it is the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of OUD among adolescents 16 and up.

Overall, new research shows buprenorphine dispensing to patients declined from 2020 to 2023. But for the smaller group of adolescents as young as 16, more buprenorphine was dispensed during the same period, which likely reflects successful outreach to pediatricians and nurse practitioners, said Dr. Andrew Terranella, a medical epidemiologist with the Division of Overdose Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Many adolescents and adults who couldn't access local, affordable medication-assisted treatment before 2020 benefited from a COVID-19 rule that let approved providers prescribe buprenorphine over the internet or by telephone.

The now-permanent rule takes effect Feb.18.

Barriers remain, Terranella said, including a lack of substance use disorder treatment providers.

Many adolescent treatment facilities don’t offer buprenorphine and some pharmacists decline to fill buprenorphine prescriptions, he said.

That's despite it being easier to use and safer to prescribe than other OUD medications, such as methadone.

"Unlike methadone, buprenorphine is also much easier for clinicians to prescribe," Terranella said, "as any clinician with a DEA prescribing authority, including pediatricians and other youth-serving primary care clinicians, can prescribe it from their office [via telehealth]."

More than 700,000 people nationwide aged 25 and under had opioid use disorder in 2023.