This is an academic paper that provides a scoping review of post-overdose responses implemented by emergency medical services (EMS). 27 programs were identified with themes including providing harm reduction in the community, integration with law enforcement, innovative community outreach, and inclusion of peer support. 

This is a toolkit from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce for employers. There is an online course, divided into five modules, that gives an overview of the legal and operational issues an employer must consider in dealing with an employee’s use of opioids and other substances, as well as additional resources. 

This is a report from the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at UPenn that provides four recommendations for the federal government to consider in addressing the opioid crisis in the domains of cautious opioid prescribing, treatment and recovery services, harm reduction strategies, and efficient distribution of money from opioid litigation. 

This is a report from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse that provides proven and promising strategies from a range of evidence-based resources, thus offering a clear and concise set of actions that states can take. Its aim is to help state policymakers understand what a public health approach looks like and how best to implement one.

This document seeks to arm policymakers with the information they need to replace misinformation and stigma with research-based facts and practical, health-based solutions. There is a wide array of existing state initiatives highlighted. 

This is a report from SAMHSA that gives an overview of HEALing Communities Study and how this project engaged community coalitions. This report's purpose is to help build and sustain community coalitions to address the opioid crisis. 

This is an academic paper that reviews the literature on including people who use drugs (PWUD) as part of research, intervention development and implementation, and policy advocacy. The barriers of stigma and discrimination must be addressed to improve engagement of PWUD in the decision-making process, though this population brings a critical skill set and unique perspective to the table. 

This academic paper is a review that presents strategies to improve opioid use disorder treatment and recovery with a focus on engineering approaches grounded in systems thinking. Specifically, this paper describes how the field of engineering can play an important supporting role in the opioid crisis through informing community-based approaches on the development, testing, and implementation of multifaceted innovative solutions.

This report from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing gives an overview of harm reduction vending machines and how they can help communities respond to the opioid crisis, including start-up and operating costs, appropriate settings, data collection, and legal considerations. 

This is an academic paper that provides commentary on how stigma stymies progress across the entire continuum of care - prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery. Federal and state initiatives to alleviate stigma are discussed. 

This is an academic paper that examines the quality of evidence for prevention strategies related to both preventing opioid misuse and opioid use disorder as well as opioid overdoses. Topics such as PDMPs, safe storage and disposal, insurance strategies, naloxone distribution and education, and community coalitions are explored within this paper.

This is a chapter from the book Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic: Balancing Societal and Individual Benefits and Risks of Prescription Opioid Use that provides an extensive overview of the evidence on a wide array of interventions and policies to address the opioid crisis. 

This is a report from Arnold Ventures and Carnevale consisting of a team of researchers that organizes what is known about public health-related services, programs, and strategies that have the strongest evidence for effectively putting abatement funds to work that may be the result of future opioid litigation settlements. Each intervention is classified by level of evidence and are represented across the continuum of care.