The opioid epidemic has taken a toll individual lives, communities and our healthcare system and is an immediate healthcare emergency. The relationship between the abuse of opioid medications and liver disease is not understood among the provider population.  Understanding and navigating effectively these off-setting circumstances will be critically important for providers and the community. The rising rates of opioid misuse coincide with a rise in viral hepatitis, particularly in young people, and in the increase in severity of liver disease across all age groups. Rates of hepatitis C (HCV), which can be spread between opioid users injecting drugs intravenously, are skyrocketing. HCV is 5 times as infectious as HIV, for example. Chronic HCV can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer, transplant, and eventually death. It also puts patients at higher risk for developing other liver diseases, like fatty liver disease and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. There is also a link between overdose deaths and the rise in available livers for transplantation. Harm reduction is more than a syringe service program and we need to mobilize to support our communities in the face of this Syndemic.

The goal of this course module is to help clinicians and other service providers understand the local and regional picture of addiction as it relates to liver health and diseases including, viral hepatitis, understand HCV screening recommendations, current treatment options, HIV/HCV coinfections, transplantation and organ donation implications, sexually transmitted diseases and specific issues with vulnerable populations especially and the opioid use disorder epidemic including adolescence, pregnant women and people who use drugs.