The Obama administration has been working on an coordinated effort to help communities battling "epidemic" heroin and prescription painkiller abuse, which includes President Barack Obama traveling to West Virginia, a state particularly hard hit by drug abuse, the White House said.

The initiative focuses on improved doctor training and expanded access to drug treatment, and Obama will "hear directly from individuals and families affected by this epidemic and the health care professionals, law enforcement officers, and community leaders working to prevent addiction and respond to its aftermath," the administration explained in a statement.

Specifically, the president signed a memorandum, addressed to the heads of executive departments and agencies, that describes an "epidemic of prescription pain medication and heroin deaths (that) is devastating (to) families and communities across the country."

The document directs federal agencies to "provide training on the appropriate and effective prescribing of opioid medications to all employees who are health care professionals" and to "review all health benefit requirements, drug formularies, program guidelines, medical management strategies (and) drug utilization review programs ... to identify any barriers individuals with opioid use disorders would encounter in accessing" medication-assisted treatment.

While the initiative only directly applies to the federal government, Obama also plans to announce that 40 private health care groups, covering 540,000 providers, will take similar steps, according to The Hill. His trip to Charleston, West Virginia, meanwhile, is highly symbolic given that the state has the highest rate of overdose deaths in the United States, ABC News reported.

"We're leading in a lot of categories that we don't like to be leading in and it's really because of our prescription drug abuse and our heroin abuse," Lt. A.C. Napier of the Charleston Police Department told Time magazine. "As a young officer I would have had the mentality just to 'get out of my way and I'll lock 'em up.' (But) that's not the answer. It's going to take us as a community coming together to get the results we need."

West Virginia officials say the drug epidemic is damaging the economy, depressing the workforce and overwhelming social services.