When a New York State Senator said, “It’s not a ghetto drug. It’s happening to doctor’s kids,” he was referring to opioids.  He was also describing two mindsets – one focused on criminality, the other on treating a disease.
And many perceive racial and ethnic implications in these two ways of thinking about the opioid epidemic.  The topic is explored in a 90-minute conversation hosted by WFYI’s Side Effects health reporting unit in partnership with the Indiana Minority Health Coalition.

Guests:  Jocelyn Bush, MD – specialist in anesthesiology and pain management; Brad Ray, PhD – mental health and criminal justice researcher, Indiana Univ-Purdue Univ-Indianapolis; Ronald Sullivan – director of Harvard’s Criminal Justice Institute; Joselyn Whitticker – president of the Grant County (IN) Minority Health Coalition

Moderator:  Michael Twyman, PhD – consultant and associate faculty member at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

Learn more about Side Effects Public Media at http://sideeffectspublicmedia.org/

Learn more about the Indiana Minority Health Coalition at http://www.imhc.org/