About the Opioid Stewardship Program
The UK Opioid Stewardship Program is a comprehensive initiative that aims to improve the quality and safety of pain management for patients who are prescribed opioids.
The program has three main objectives:
- To improve the overall approach to unnecessary opioid use by conducting functional pain assessments, setting collaborative goals and providing education for patients and providers.
- To improve the safety of opioid use by optimizing policy and procedure guidelines, updating tools and modalities, providing education, integrating clinical pharmacists into medication management and implementing risk mitigation strategies.
- To treat patients with opioid use disorder by improving the screening, identification and treatment of this condition, decreasing stigma and bias and promoting harm reduction practices.
Stephanie Abel, PharmD, BCPS
Opioid Stewardship Program Coordinator
Prior to her current role, Dr. Abel practiced as a pain management and palliative medicine clinical pharmacy specialist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center-James Cancer Hospital. She received her PharmD from Creighton University in Omaha, NE, after which she completed a PGY-1 in Pharmacy Practice at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC, and a PGY-2 in Pain Management and Palliative Care at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. She is a past chair of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy Pain and Palliative Care Practice and Research Network, as well as the Nominations and Advocacy Committees for the Society of Pain and Palliative Care Pharmacists (SPPCP), and a member of the Opioid Stewardship Task Force for SPPCP.
Abel has authored primary literature and book chapters on topics such as acute pain management in opioid tolerant patients. She has also been an invited speaker for many regional and national talks as well as developed national and international education modules on topics such as opioid stewardship, pain management, palliative care, opioid use disorder and medical marijuana to multidisciplinary audiences.