Glen Cove Students try to solve opioid epidemic

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For the first time, students from Glen Cove High School participated in the sixth annual Medical Marvels competition through Northwell Health.

Along with their teacher, Jillian Romano, students Mikael Barajas, Carina Gigliotti, Adam Rami Hassan, Andrew Palafox and Emma Spoto from the Science Research Literacy class competed on March 9 against teams from 22 high schools from across Long Island and Queens.

In preparation for the competition, students wrote a 14-page paper, where they proposed an original solution to the national opioid crisis. Students created scientific display board to showcase their proposal and were responsible for a two-minute oral presentation, which was followed by a one-minute question-and-answer session.

The presentation included a detailed scientific description of a clinical investigation that studied the effects of decreasing the dosage of opioids without a patient’s knowledge. The students predicted that the slow decrease in dosage would allow patients to recover from addiction at a faster rate. Students explained that they would administer a number of surveys, physical fitness tests and brain imaging techniques to validate the physiological effect of their experiment.

— Zach Gottehrer-Cohen