This paper summarizes community forums that were held at nine locations throughout rural northeast Minnesota from October 2015 through March 2018. Each forum was planned by a university researcher and a planning team composed of community leaders and local public health officials and included a variety of professional speakers from health care, public health, law enforcement, and treatment and recovery, as well as individuals from the community who shared their own personal stories of addiction and recovery.

The different ingredients of a successful forum that increased community collaboration are discussed within this document. 

This is a presentation from the South East Area Health Education Center (SEAHEC) in Wilmington, NC that describes the collaborative nature of the community opioid response in this area. There is specific focus on the different types of stakeholders involved. 

This is an academic paper that describes community meetings held in a rural area of Oklahoma to address to the opioid crisis. Surveys showed that holding group discussions and listening to experts may increase engagement of the community in a response, with priorities being access to treatment and youth-based prevention. 

This is an academic paper that assessed community readiness in counties in North Carolina and its relationship to county-level opioid-related mortality and morbidity. Community readiness has been linked to collective action from communities to implement comprehensive responses to the public health issue. Findings indicate that counties with higher opioid-related mortality also had higher community readiness. 

This is a report from the National Prevention Science Coalition that highlights the importance of prevention strategies in addressing the opioid crisis and outlines a national blueprint to guide public health policies and prevention services to help individuals, their families, and communities. Community-based and school-based prevention interventions are discussed that can increase protective factors, decrease risk factors, and address adverse childhood experiences. 

This is a research report from the Urban Institute that provides a scope of the opioid crisis and its far-reaching impacts. Next, criminal justice responses are discussed and specific programs are highlighted. 

This is a report which takes an in-depth look at the problems courts and citizens alike are facing regarding opioid use disorder. The authors have established a framework for courts to utilize to address the disease of addiction from the judiciary's unique perspective. 

This report by the Workers Compensation Research Institute highlights higher rates of opioid dispensing and chronic opioid dispensing among some groups of injured workers in rural counties. Workers employed in mining and construction industries were more likely than workers in other fields to receive opioids for pain and were more likely to receive opioids on a longer-term basis and at higher doses. 

This is a report from the New York State Association of Counties that highlights the different programs that have been implemented to address the opioid crisis across counties in New York. Most of the county responses were led through the actions of coalitions and task forces. 

This is a regularly updated issue brief from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that offers a preliminary assessment of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on illicit drug markets, with the aim of alerting communities about how the drug supply and drug use could be affected in both the short- and long-term. 

This is a collection of a wide range of COVID-19 resources from the Curated Library of Opioid Use for Decision-Makers (CLOUD) across the continuum of care: prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery. 

This is a report from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) that provides recommendations on how state agencies can work together to prevent and treat substance use disorder, including engaging with state offices of rural health.

This document offers examples from eight states and emphasizes state efforts related to opioid misuse and opioid use disorder.