Listen to the following podcast story from the journal Nature. You WILL need to listen to the brief audio clip (which is a bit different from the written article) to fully understand and answer the homework questions.
How digital drug users could help to halt the US opioid epidemic file:///C:/Users/18309/Downloads/Nature-2018-1.pdf
Then, answer the following questions. The first three questions are confirming your understanding of the content. Question #4 (both parts) is the only question for which you need to comment/respond to your peers’ posts.
Why is the link between increases in prescriptions of opioids and deaths from opioid use not a simple one? Describe some of the factors that affect potential addiction.
What is agent-based modeling? Why is it useful?
What kind of data does Daniel Ciccarone work with?
How can it assist Georgiy Bobashev’s models?
Explain what the researchers learned about black tar heroin and what that means for the HIV epidemic.
Discuss the following:
Do you think these models will actually turn out to be useful in predicting real life behavior? What do you think would need to happen in order to put the information in them to use? How could research be applied?
Is there something that was overlooked in the podcast that you believe could more effectively address the opioid epidemic? (If not, reiterate what you think DOES need to be done to save lives and how this research is addressing the problem).
