Giving Compass' Take:

· The number of opioid-related deaths continues to rise every year, with roughly 115 Americans dying every day due to an opioid-related overdose. As The Hill reports, this number is up about 28 percent in 2016 from the 2015 year. Now, Congress is taking action to address the opioid epidemic in hopes to reduce the number of deaths annually and prevent further spread and misuse of drugs.

· How can Congress provide effective legislation that tackles the opioid crisis but also provides help to those individuals who suffer from chronic pain? What can be done to ensure prescription painkillers are not over-prescribed or misused?

· Learn more about the opioid crisis and the legislation Rep. Debbie Dingell is working on to help curb the crisis while providing care for those suffering from pain.

House Republicans are beefing up their efforts to tackle the nation's deadly opioid crisis, but some experts question how effective their piecemeal approach will be.

Congress is touting its recent flurry of action — the House is on track to pass more than 50 bills addressing the issue by the end of this week — on an issue that is hitting many constituents hard, and one that lawmakers are sure to hear about on the campaign trail this year.

Still, many public health advocates, who applaud the steps taken by the House, also caution that more work is needed to truly end the scourge of overdose deaths, underscoring the scale of the challenge facing congressional leaders.

The top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee has expressed some skepticism of the effort.

“Republicans are touting this opioid package, which really doesn’t do a lot,” Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.) said at a press conference Wednesday. “I would say it doesn’t really do much for treatment, it really doesn’t do much for helping people recover.” Yet the effort has largely remained bipartisan. Democrats have authored and co-sponsored bills, and all but three pieces of legislation passed largely without opposition.

And House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who calls the latest effort to fight the drug epidemic “historic,” emphasized that this does not represent the last of their actions.

“We’re going to legislate and evaluate. We’re not done,” Walden told The Hill on Friday. “There will be more opportunities coming because we want to get it right. We’ll need to come back. That’s part of being good legislators.”

Read the full article about the opioid epidemic by Melanie Zanona and Rachel Roubein at The Hill.