The purpose of this study was to examine the demographic and geographic disparities in the incidence of newborn babies with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) in the United States from 2012 to 2015. Specifically, I examined the prevalence of NAS according to geographic location (i.e. urban versus rural) and race while also controlling for mother’s insurance type, median household income, and trends over time. Additional analyses explored the relationship between NAS and delivery method, birth weight, and neonatal candidiasis that causes sepsis. Understanding the disparities in NAS and birth outcomes during this period (2012-2015) can help better target interventions for combating the health and economic burdens of NAS since maternal opioid use has continued to rise since 2015. Additionally, existing research into geographic disparities in NAS have only been region-specific. This study expands the scope of this literature by considering urban versus rural disparities across the country.

The escalation of the opioid epidemic in the United States has sparked sweeping legislation meant to regulate physicians' opioid prescribing practices. The demands of such policies force physicians to initiate discussions that could jeopardize the collaborative doctor- patient relationships necessary for curbing inappropriate opioid prescriptions. Drawing on sociopragmatics, this discourse analysis study of primary care interactions examines the face- saving linguistic features employed by physicians in negotiating the line between policy demands and maintaining collaborative relationships. The findings reveal several face-saving acts‚"pseudo requests, downtowners, broadening, redirection, tag questions, impersonalization, listing, and (negative) imagery‚"used by physicians when enacting the three most prominent policies: (1) monitoring opioid use, (2) prescribing anti-overdose medication, and (3) transitioning patients from opioids to alternative treatment. Informed by Goffman's concept of "face-work," this study provides evidence of the communicative burden placed on physicians implementing disagreeable opioid policies, as well as opening up discussions on how policymakers and medical institutions can support physicians in implementing opioid policies. Keywords: opioids, face-work, face threats, medical discourse, doctor-patient interaction, discourse analysis, sociopragmatics

In recent years, the opioid crisis in the United States has sparked significant discussion on doctor- patient interactions concerning chronic pain treatments, but little to no attention has been given to investigating the vocal aspects of patient talk. This exploratory sociolinguistic study intends to fill this knowledge gap by employing prosodic discourse analysis to examine context-specific linguistic features used by the interlocutors of two distinct medical interactions. We found that patients employed both low pitch and creak as linguistic resources when describing chronic pain, narrating symptoms, and requesting opioids. The situational use of both features informs us about the linguistic ways in which patients frame fraught issues like chronic pain in light of the current opioid crisis. This study expands the breadth of phonetic analysis within the domain of discourse analysis, serving to illuminate discussions surrounding the illocutionary role of the lower vocal tract in expressing emotions.