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 report from SAMHSA has practice and policy considerations for collaborating child welfare, medical, and service providers in the context of pregnant women with opioid use disorders.
The document is intended to support the efforts of states, tribes, and local communities in addressing the needs of pregnant women with opioid use disorders and their infants and families and endorses a coordinated, multi-system approach.
Framing the opioid crisis from a public health perspective requires considering the interaction of multiple determinants, including structural factors (eg, poverty and racism), the inadequate management of pain, and poor access to addiction treatment and harm-reduction services (eg, syringe services).
This novel ecological framework for harmful opioid use provides multiple recommendations to improve public health and clinical practice, including improved data collection to guide resource allocation, steps to increase safer prescribing, stigma-reduction campaigns, increased spending on harm reduction and treatment, criminal justice policy reform, and regulatory changes related to controlled substances.
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 special release by the Surgeon General is an extension of the previous comprehensive report on substance use disorders, highlighting extensive opioid-related information in one document. It provides the latest data on prevalence of substance use, opioid misuse, opioid use disorders, opioid overdoses, and related harms. There are additional resources embedded throughout the report.
This report from the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association provides hospitals with clinical and operational recommendations for developing policies and procedures for administering and/or prescribing medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) in hospital emergency departments or satellite emergency facilities.
This technical brief, a publication of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), describes promising and innovative medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) models of care in primary care settings, describes barriers to MOUD implementation, summarizes the evidence available on MOUD models of care in primary care settings, and identifies gaps in the evidence base.
The various models of care presented in this technical brief may help inform the individualized implementation of MOUD models of care in different primary care settings.
This is an academic paper that summarizes the evidence supporting medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD). It provides an overview of the pharmacology of MOUD, and discusses clinical indications for each form of MOUD.
This is a consensus study report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine put together by a committee of experts in the field. It summarizes the evidence on medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), discusses the use of and evidence for these medications in different populations and settings, and identifies barriers to implementing MOUD.
This policy brief from the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) reviews several key opportunities to remedy the problem of the lack of evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder in rural communities. It emphasizes a dual focus on making medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) an option in all rural communities and fully funding rural mental health infrastructure. There is also an extensive set of policy recommendations in this document.
This report is a part of SAMHSA's Evidence-Based Resource Guide Series. It promotes policies and practices to lower the risk of overdose for persons with opioid use disorder who are or have been in contact with criminal justice systems with a focus on medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD).
This guide:
Additionally, examples of implemented programs and links to resources are provided in this document.
