This paper describes Interact for Health, a foundation working to address the opioid crisis in Cincinatti, OH, with particular focus on funding strategy, outcomes, and lessons learned from 2008 to 2018. As an organization that awarded grants and helped build a community response to address the opioid crisis in an area that was hit hard and early, this paper offers lessons learned for communities and foundations currently implementing action plans. 

This is a report from the Open Society Foundation for law enforcement personnel on how to incorporate, support, and create space for approaches that aim to increase public safety and health, reduce harm to people who use drugs, and provide law enforcement alternatives to common punitive models.

This study sought to understand important changes in co-occurring opioid and nonopioid drug use (i.e., polysubstance use) within the opioid crisis in the United States. Past-month use of at least 1 nonopioid drug occurred in nearly all participants (> 90%) in this study.

This paper emphasizes that viewing opioid trends in a “silo” ignores the fact that polysubstance use is ubiquitous among those with opioid use disorder and that significant changes in polysubstance use should be monitored alongside opioid trends.

This is a toolkit developed by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services which gives communities strategies on how to establish a post overdose response team. This includes providing harm reduction strategies, naloxone, overdose prevention training, and overall ways to reduce overdose mortality. The toolkit provides four specific phases which explain how to design and implement the program and also make improvements. 

This is an academic paper which compares the impact of different overdose prevention site locations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The authors did this comparison through the use of a mathematical model that predicts the behavior and demographic information of users. This paper also highlights which racial groups are more likely to benefit from the overdose prevention sites based on where in the city they are located. 

This is a toolkit from the Harm Reduction Coalition that is tailored to pregnant and parenting individuals, their families, and their service providers and has been written by people with lived experience. The overall goal is to improve the health and well-being of pregnant people who use substances and their families by providing information and resources with a harm reduction frame. 

Prescribe to Prevent was compiled by several naloxone access and overdose prevention advocates. The website provides information and resources on prescribing and dispensing naloxone. 

This is a federally-funded website from a collaboration of academic institutions that provides information on state laws relevant to the opioid crisis including laws on opioid prescribing, medications for opioid use disorder, naloxone, and syringe service programs.  

This is a report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction that provides both practitioners and policymakers with an analysis of the current evidence base on take-home naloxone. Specific programs and initiatives in Europe are highlighted in this document. 

This is a rural health policy brief from the CDC, as a companion to its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report article Illicit Drug Use, Illicit Drug Use Disorders, and Drug Overdose Deaths in Metropolitan and Non-metropolitan areas, providing policy recommendations for rural areas in addressing the opioid crisis related to increasing adherence to evidence-based prescribing practices, expanding access to medication-assisted treatment, and increasing the availability of overdose-reversing drugs such as naloxone. Case studies of community programs are highlighted in this document. 

This is a report for primary care providers on what they can do to address the opioid crisis and what treatment options are available depending on the patient’s willingness to engage in treatment. It also summarizes literature on SBIRT and opioid use disorder (OUD) and, more generally, substance use disorder (SUD) treatment in primary care.

This is a website from Johns Hopkins University on how to use principles to guide states, counties, and local communities on how to most effectively and efficiently abate the opioid crisis with opioid settlement money.