This section of the toolkit was developed using information gathered through interviews and focus groups with community outreach and prevention stakeholders, who represent organizations involved in overdose outreach work such as community naloxone administration, housing support, and harm reduction services.
Below you will find the promising overdose response strategies identified by outreach and prevention stakeholders in Genesee County. Each promising strategy is numbered, along with stakeholder identified barriers to accomplishing the proposed strategy and how the System for Opioid Overdose Surveillance (SOS) may assist stakeholders’ ability to accomplish each promising strategy.
Promising Strategy 1: Informing Messaging Strategies
Outreach and prevention stakeholders emphasize the importance of effective community messaging in their effort to reduce overdose. They emphasize raising awareness of drug use and overdose among youth, using connections in coalitions to disseminate messaging through the community, and creating messaging that reduces the stigma around overdose. It is particularly important to these stakeholders to create messaging tailored specifically to the community’s needs and based upon current overdose data.
Barriers to Informing Messaging Strategies
Two of the greatest barriers impacting outreach and prevention stakeholders from disseminating effective community messaging include the stigma surrounding overdose and a lack of understanding about the affected population. The stigma that exists in the community drives a general lack of understanding around drug overdose. This lack of understanding around such a complex issue as overdose, makes it difficult for outreach and prevention stakeholders to create impactful messaging. They remain hopeful, however, that with access to more complete and timely data, messaging strategies can be tailored more specifically to community demographics and needs.
Near Real-Time Data Impact on Informing Messaging Strategies
Outreach and prevention stakeholders use the near real-time SOS data to improve community messaging strategies:
- Use the data to communicate with parents and youth populations about the risk of drug overdose. One stakeholder saw value in the use of SOS data in conjunction with their coalition connections to school districts or the faith community as one way to enhance their ability to reach a wider audience for overdose education.
- Observe trends or hot spots in the SOS data to plan for the most optimal timing and content of community messaging. And target messaging in those areas with the most opioid incidents.
- Incorporate SOS data into speaking engagements or training materials. Stakeholders feel that the SOS data provides a visual, concrete representation of the impact overdose is having on the community. This is an important way of reminding the community, or fellow stakeholders, that there is work to be done to properly address the issue of overdose.
“I think that looking at the trend information can continue to help us in planning and providing different types of community awareness messaging around the issue in terms of both risk and prevention strategies, so we go…into the population and [determine] what kind of message would resonate the best.”
Outreach and Prevention Organization
Promising Strategy 2: Targeted Outreach
Outreach and prevention stakeholders express the need for outreach that can be tailored to specific communities based on the occurrence of overdose:
- Assess the response for the community: Being informed of which communities need a larger versus more concentrated response to overdose, staffing may be alerted ahead of time and organizations can better prepare stakeholders for an influx of drug overdose cases.
- Alert the community: In the situation of a developing hot spot or area of concern, it can also be important for stakeholders to alert the community itself, as well as to increase awareness of the resources available to assist with drug misuse or overdose. Targeted outreach maximizes stakeholders’ ability to provide resources and prevention materials to those using drugs or who may have overdosed.
Barriers to Targeted Outreach
Outreach and prevention stakeholders describe several barriers to overcome to maximize targeted outreach:
- Lack of access to resources or knowledge: Client access to treatment is a great concern. Access is lacking in both transportation, such as the absence or unpredictable methods of transportation to services, and in lack of knowledge, such as individuals not knowing where to look or how to engage with services.
- Lack of resources: As mentioned by many stakeholder groups involved in overdose response, development of new programs to increase access to services is limited due to the challenges in acquiring new funding. Projects that aim to expand access, such as a mobile unit that brings services to communities, requires funding and years of planning. Staffing is also a finite resource that needs to be available for the development of new projects or programs.
Near Real-Time Data Impact on Targeted Outreach
Outreach and prevention stakeholders express how they may utilize near real-time data to mitigate barriers to targeted outreach:
- SOS data enhances the ability to assess community needs. Near real-time data can be used to determine the level of staffing needed to respond or connect individuals to treatment services in a specific time frame or in a specific location in need. The SOS data assists stakeholders in then connecting individuals with treatment services and in alerting treatment or recovery facilities to a potential influx of clients or patients.
- Near real-time data can also be used to support new funding opportunities and program expansion. One stakeholder is particularly interested in developing a mobile unit to deliver services to the community and foresees SOS data being utilized to determine where the unit should be located or how often it should move.
“I really would like to see more cooperation…maybe it’s just networking and more partnering and working together with our law enforcement agencies in regard to the work that we do. Trying to get more people on-board with removing the stigma out of drug use and treatment and things like that, and not penalizing people criminally. We need more programming around getting them help and assistance, mental help and education and things like that versus making it criminal.”
Outreach and Prevention Stakeholder
Promising Strategy 3: Increasing Partnerships with Public Safety
Outreach and prevention stakeholders express a desire to build connections with public safety officials and to bolster support for response efforts across disciplines. In the eyes of stakeholders, they see increased partnerships between organizations as a way to educate a wider audience and improve coordinated response activities. These stakeholders are particularly interested in increasing communication and collaboration with public safety officials to strengthen ties with the community.
Barriers to Increasing Partnerships with Public Safety
Outreach and prevention stakeholders describe several types of barriers they face affecting their ability to develop partnerships with public safety:
- Logistical challenges in connecting organizations via events: In order for connections to develop via events such as coalition meetings, groups need to be willing to attend, and more importantly need to have the time and capacity to attend these events.
- Persistent stigma around overdose, as well as the stigma involved in calling 911 if you or a friend are overdosing. The stigma surrounding overdose is present in many facets of this work and individuals using drugs are often afraid to contact emergency services in fear of police presence and arrest.
- Lack of police-administered naloxone reporting: EMS personnel are required to report an incidence of naloxone administration, but the same is not the case for police. This continues to be a gap in available data and was a concern for many stakeholders in outreach and prevention as well as other sectors.
Near Real-Time Data Impact on Increasing Public Safety Partnerships
Outreach and prevention stakeholders consider the availability of near real-time SOS data as a valuable tool in several ways:
- SOS data is a way to connect organizations. The data is also seen as a way to engage with public safety officials, partnering with them to try to develop a police specific form for reporting naloxone administration. This enhancement (also a topic of interest expressed by public safety stakeholders) would increase the potential for connections to be made among public safety and other overdose response organizations.
- Use of the SOS data leads to greater support among public safety for education surrounding overdose stigma. This would encourage greater focus on making overdose less criminal and highlight opportunities for rehabilitation. New programming could be developed in conjunction with public safety, using near real-time data as evidence for this need.
Impacts of COVID-19 on Outreach and Prevention on Stakeholder Response
The COVID-19 pandemic altered many ways in which outreach and prevention stakeholders were able to function:
- Cancellation of events due to the COVID-19 emergency: One way in which COVID-19 resulted in response interruption was the cancellation of events such as a spring drug take back day.
- Limited access to medication disposal boxes: At the beginning of the COVID-19 public health emergency, there was little access to medication safe disposal boxes due to the pandemic restrictions on accessing public locations.
- Limited in-person interactions: Many of the stakeholders had to shift their meetings and some programming to virtual formats due to the pandemic. This caused a disconnect between stakeholders and their clients due to confusion regarding closing and re-opening of many of the organizations’ facilities. Additionally, stakeholders were unable to further develop relationships with public safety officials as they had planned. The pandemic has required adaption to new policies for both stakeholders and the community.