Three UNC students appointed to N.C. Attorney General's opioid misuse panel

Three UNC students have been appointed to North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein’s Council on Collegiate Opioid Misuse.

Sheel Patel, Amanda Sin and Anna Austin are UNC's student representatives for the 2018-2019 Council, a group of students from different North Carolina colleges and universities focused on creating strategies and implementing policies to fight opioid mistreatment on college campuses. 

For Patel, a first-year public policy and pre-business major, watching the documentary "Heroin: Cape Cod, USA," ignited his interest about substance abuse. 

“The sheer devastation that it expressed and portrayed, I had never even thought about things like that, and then I started talking about it to a bunch of my friends,” Patel said. 

After learning about the impacts of the opioid epidemic in rural parts of North Carolina from some of his friends, Patel said he felt compelled to act. 

“There’s so many different arrays of experiences and knowledge on this field and inside the Council, and honestly, I’m a newbie,” Patel said. “I’m not an expert on the subject, so I’m just really excited to learn about this and figure out how I can best help to end this epidemic as quickly as possible.” 

Patel is also a member of the Undergraduate Executive Branch's First-Year Focus Council. 

Austin, a doctorate candidate in maternal and child health and epidemiology, served on the 2017-2018 Council. Last year, the Council created a toolkit of strategies and policies to fight opioid and broader substance misuse on college campuses. Austin said she is excited to return to the Council this year and start implementing those policies. 

“I really enjoyed getting to know different students from across North Carolina who have an interest in addressing the opioid epidemic and substance misuse broadly,” Austin said. “Some are interested in being on the Council for professional reasons and some are interested because they have been personally affected by the opioid epidemic.” 

In addition to her work on the Council, Austin is a graduate research assistant at the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center and involved with the Child Maltreatment Research and Practice Network. 

Sin, a junior political science and peace, war and defense major, learned more about the North Carolina opioid epidemic through her internship for the Attorney General’s Office at the North Carolina Department of Justice this past summer. Sin attended meetings of the North Carolina Opioid and Prescription Drug Abuse Advisory Committee and said the testimonies from different North Carolina residents grieving the deaths of loved ones and family members from overdose deaths moved her.

“I really believe that we have an obligation to do better as a society to rally behind these people, because these people didn’t deserve to die," Sin said. "These people didn’t deserve to lose loved ones. Because these are very preventable things."

Sin is also a member of the Carolina International Relations Association and a committee chairperson for Model United Nations at Chapel Hill. 

Between 1999 and 2016, the number of drug poisoning deaths in North Carolina went from 363 to 1,965, a 440 percent increase, according to a report by the 2017-2018 Council.  

“The opioid epidemic is the biggest public health crisis we face today, and we need these talented, smart students to help us address substance misuse on campuses," Stein said in a press release. “I look forward to seeing the results of the initiatives these students are working on, and I’m grateful to them for joining the fight.”

Stein launched the Council in October of 2017 to tackle the issue of opioid misuse on the collegiate level. The 2017-2018 Council met with an array of substance abuse professionals throughout the year to discuss different measures to confront substance abuse at their schools and collaborate on policy initiatives. 

Patel, Austin and Sin all emphasized the importance of raising awareness of substance misuse at UNC and fighting the stigma surrounding opioid addiction. 

“We have a lot of work to do as a society in terms of destigmatizing addiction and drug misuse,” Sin said. “I feel that people should learn about the opioid epidemic and take an interest in it because addiction can happen to anyone.” 

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