On this installment of StudioTulsa on Health, guest host John Schumann speaks with Linda Johnston, the Director of Social Services for Tulsa County. Last month, Johnston spoke briefly with Steve Innskeep of NPR's Morning Edition about the County's Drug Recycling Program, which began in 2004. Through this program, which Johnston helped to create, more than $16 million worth of prescription medicines have been given to the poor...and it's a program that was created at a total cost, as Johnston tells us today, of less than $6,000. Johnston speaks in detail about how the Drug Recycling Program got started, how exactly it works, who thought it up in the first place, and why it took Oklahoma lawmakers seven years to finally approve this now-commonplace program. She also talks about the volunteers and staffers -- many of them retired doctors -- who actually make the program happen.
ST on Health: Tulsa County's Drug Recycling Program, a Pioneering Initiative That's Now Quite Common
