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Abstract #149313

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Patricia M. Speck, DNSc APRN FAAN¹, Pamela D. Connor, PhD², Hairong Cheng, MS², Earnestine B. Small, EdD RN¹, Margaret T. Hartig, PhD APRN-BC¹, and Carol Warren Blakemore, LCSW APRN-BC MBA³. (1) Primary Care/Public Health, University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Nursing, 877 Madison Avenue, Memphis, TN 38163, 9014887723, pspeck@utmem.edu, (2) Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, 600 Jefferson Avenue, Third Floor, Memphis, TN 38105, (3) Faculty Practice, University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Nursing, 877 Madison Avenue, Memphis, TN 38163

Overview: Drug courts established in the 1990s provided the criminal drug addict with therapeutic treatment instead of incarceration; however, not much is known about this populations' voluntary health risk, subsequent disease, or use of health care systems.

Methods: A sample of 45 drug court volunteers (62% African American, 36% Caucasian, and 2% Asian; 42% female and 58% male; and 44% 18-29 years, 56% 30 years and older) were evaluated for health history, exposure to risk, mental health, and current physical health status. The analysis included descriptive statistics, McNemar's Test, and linear regression.

Results: Findings reveal multiple health risks with 82% smokers; 85% gained weight after drug court enrollment; 73% dental disease; 17% liver disease, 39% hepatitis, 54% hypercholesterolemia; 32% respiratory disease, 50% ear pathology; 43% genitourinary diseases, 17% asymptomatic STI; 33% cardiovascular pathology; 25% experienced deadly intrafamilial violence; 54% mental health disease; and 32% without health care in 5 or more years and 22% never. Conversely, only 8% sought government assistance. There is significant difference between self-report and physical findings in dental disease (P=0.0047) but no difference in respiratory disease (P=1.0000); increasingly different kinds of drugs used are significantly related to race (P=0.0003) and gender (P=0.0351) where white males use more types of drugs than all other groups.

Conclusions: This drug court population needs health care for existing yet undiagnosed illness. Risk behaviors with resulting asymptomatic disease are potentially lethal. Coupled with an aversion to health seeking behaviors and an absence of resources, this group remains a “never-served” population.

Learning Objectives:

• The learner will identify the key elements of the drug court process
• The learner will list the behavioral risks taken by drug court clients
• The learner will discuss the health and lifestyle outcomes in the addicted drug court population in Memphis TN

Keywords: Access to Health Care, Drug Abuse Treatment

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? Yes

Name of Organization	Clinical/Research Area	Type of relationship
Shelby County Drug Court Support Foundation	Nursing care	Advisory Committee/Board and University contracted with Foundation for Health Risk Assessment

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

• Audio (mp3) recording
• Slides (pdf) or Handout
• Multimedia recording