Spotting deadly trends

UF named coordinating center for national drug abuse surveillance system

By Jill Pease
“We must embrace innovative strategies to address drug epidemics, and NDEWS is just that — a data-intensive approach that enables a rapid and smart response to emerging trends in drug abuse.”
— David R. Nelson, M.D.
Senior vice president for health affairs at UF and president of UF Health
team The NDEWS coordinating center team includes (top row, from left): Dr. Elan Barenholtz, Dr. Linda Cottler, Nicole Fitzgerald, (middle row) Dr. Bruce Goldberger, Tamara Millay, Dr. Sara Jo Nixon, (bottom row) Dr. Joseph Palamar, Dr. Catherine Striley and Sean Taylor.
“This new surveillance system is also innovative in that it will allow us to collect ‘drug checking’ data from the public.”
— Joseph Palamar, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Associate professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and co-investigator of NDEWS.