The Brandeis Opioid Resource Connector serves community stakeholders working to combat the opioid epidemic. It is a product of the Brandeis Opioid Policy Research Collaborative.
The heart of the Brandeis Opioid Resource Connector is our curated list of Program Models that address the many aspects of the opioid crisis.
Successful responses to the opioid crisis involve coordination among agencies and stakeholders within a community, ensuring that essential interventions across the continuum of care are implemented with available resources.
Understanding the numbers behind the opioid epidemic, and demonstrating how it affects a community, are critical steps in determining what approaches should be prioritized, and in informing local efforts.
This section contains links to a curated list of external resources related to actionable responses to the opioid crisis.
An important step in countering the opioid crisis is to prevent new cases.
Prevention often includes providing treatment providers, educators, parents, and potential substance users with the knowledge and skills they need to prevent harmful behaviors.
Research indicates that comprehensive, effective treatment for opioid use disorder increases one’s chances of wellness.
There is a range of evidence-based approaches from FDA-approved medications to cognitive-behavioral interventions to mutual aid groups. Treatment planning should be tailored to the individual.
We know that opioid use disorder can be a chronic condition and recurrence is common. Recovery is the process by which people sustain wellness by focusing on improving one’s health, sense of purpose, and connection with community.
Harm reduction aims to reduce the adverse health, economic, and social consequences of substance use. Effective harm reduction approaches are designed to be practical, feasible, and safe.
This is a free curriculum offered by the National Harm Reduction Coalition and aims to provide a structured course for providing harm reduction in communities and building community support for harm reduction interventions. The course includes information on drug-induced homicide, syringe access barriers, and the intersectionality of drug use with other environmental factors.
This is an academic paper that uses a survey among law enforcement officers in High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTAs) to explore knowledge and attitudes towards responding to opioid overdoses. Though most officers have access to naloxone and been trained to respond to an opioid overdose, some (15%) report not having access to naloxone. Negative attitudes towards overdose prevention were more likely in those that responded to many overdose calls.
This is a toolkit from the Kraft Center for Community Health that is based on the CareZONE model and helps communities replicate mobile addiction services. Identifying ideal locations to provide services, licensures, finances, outreach and engagement, and standard operation procedures are discussed in detail.
This is a report from Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative that summarizes the high-priority needs for law enforcement to address the opioid crisis, identified through a workshop of stakeholders.
This is a report from the SAFE Project and the Police, Treatment, and Community Collaborative that highlights law enforcement diversion models to address the opioid crisis, such as self-referrals to treatment with police departments as entry points, active outreach, overdose education and naloxone distribution, and law enforcement-initiated treatment engagement. Several program models are discussed within this document.
This is an academic paper that discusses the feasibility of using a smartphone app to increase the response to opioid overdoses. Volunteers can signal an apparent overdose to other volunteers using the app to expand access and availability to naloxone. The first naloxone dose was provided by a nearby volunteer responding to the alert in 22 of 74 cases, successful reversal was reported in 71 of 74 cases, and layperson intervention preceded EMS by 5 min or more in 60% of cases.
This is an issue brief from the Network of Public Health Law that provides an overview of naloxone access and Good Samaritan laws. There is a table that shows the legal status of these laws for each state. Laws that encourage the prescription and use of naloxone and the timely seeking of emergency medical assistance will have the intended effect of reducing opioid overdose deaths and are, thus, likely some of the lowest-hanging fruit available to policymakers today.
This is a website that provides summary documents on how pharmacists are responding to the opioid crisis, including preventing opioid misuse, increasing access to medications of opioid use disorder, and providing harm reduction services. These documents describe success stories as well as clinical and systemic barriers faced by pharmacists.
This report from the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health (NOSORH) summarizes the lessons learned from the Rural Opioid Overdose Reversal (ROOR) Program.
The program funded 18 awardees to develop community partnerships in an effort to combat the opioid crisis at the local level. The goal of the program was to reduce the incidences of morbidity and mortality related to opioid overdoses in rural communities through the purchase and placement of naloxone.
There is also a discussion on building community partnerships and there is a list of resources at the end of the document.
This is a report supported by the CDC which provides an overview of relevant legal, health, and equity considerations in collecting, using, and sharing overdose related data. Relevant resources are included throughout the document.
This report from the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) summarizes the results of an environmental scan of 198 local health departments (LHD) regarding their local opioid overdose prevention and response activities.
This document outlines and compares statistics by the size of the population the LHD serves. In addition, the report discusses efforts and activities related to workforce, clinical and programmatic services, policy, communication, partnership, and data collection. Stories from the field are also included.
This is an academic paper that uses a survey of county governments to determine what opioid policy and programmatic activities local governments are implementing and which activities are more challenging to implement. Having police officers carry naloxone and establishing a task force of community leaders were easier to implement, and establishing needle exchanges and allowing arrest alternatives for opioid offenses were more challenging to implement.
