The use and misuse of prescription medication has received a lot of press as Pennsylvania grapples with the rise of opioid-related overdose deaths, but apparently Americans’ love of prescriptions knows no bounds.

America doesn’t just have a problem with overzealous prescription of opioid painkillers. It has a prescription problem in general. In a report published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers, for the first time ever, were able to contextualize the scope of the problem.

The report uses research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the Pew Charitable Trust, collected from 2010 to 2011. The numbers are staggering. At least 30 percent of antibiotics prescribed in the United States are unnecessary, the report concludes.

According to the report, 44 percent of antibiotic prescriptions are written to treat patients with acute respiratory conditions — think the flu, allergies, pneumonia, etc. Of those prescriptions to adults and children, half are unnecessary, the report found.

That means doctors, in total, give out about 47 million unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions each year. Most can’t even be said to be well-intentioned because they are written for patients with conditions like the flu, colds and other viral illnesses which can’t be treated by antibiotics.

Even that staggering figure is likely an under count, researchers say. The report used in-person patient visits to reach its conclusions, but not patients who phone in to doctors’ offices, or seek treatment at urgent care centers or other medical facilities. They also didn’t include prescriptions written by nurse practitioners or physician assistants.

How do we best address this problem? For years public health officials have tried varying strategies — education, reminders and even financial incentives — to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions by doctors. Another study — published in February by researchers from the University of Southern California — points to a different way forward.

In that study, researchers used behavioral interventions called “nudges” to curtail inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions at 49 practices in Boston and Los Angeles. Essentially, researchers tested whether actions like public rankings of physicians’ performance, peer reviews, and asking doctors to justify their use of antibiotics before handing out a prescription would help curb inappropriate prescriptions.

And it worked. Over 18 months, researchers said, the techniques prevented, on average, one inappropriate prescription for every eight patients doctors saw.

That may not seem like a huge step forward. But in the face of a massive problem that has dire, long-term implications for public health, any positive effect is welcome news.

Antibiotics have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and are the most powerful tool our medical system has when it comes to fighting life-threatening diseases and traumas. We must do everything in our power to protect and preserve their efficacy.