Near real-time opioid overdose data provided by the System for Opioid Overdose Surveillance (SOS), gives stakeholders in Genesee County access to a breadth of information that helps facilitate the implementation of new and enhanced opioid overdose response and prevention efforts. Through our focus groups and one-on-one interviews with stakeholders, we compiled a list of five recommendations for strengthening data-driven opioid overdose response efforts in Genesee County that may impact stakeholders and their ability to respond and prevent opioid overdoses.
Access to near real-time overdose reports and the SOS web-based interactive dashboard provides stakeholders with data needed to develop data-driven programs, outreach, and response efforts. Through monitoring trends in the data, current practices can be modified (e.g. public safety patrol), and new practices can be developed. Near real-time data can also be used to identify locations in greater need of messaging regarding the available substance use disorder or overdose treatment resources.
In communities in which stigma and misinformation regarding overdose exists, effective messaging and educational outreach are vital to overdose response. Near real-time data provided by SOS helps inform communities about the burden of overdose in the area as well as identifies locations that may need more assistance than others (i.e. a larger burden of overdose exists). Additionally, demographic data from SOS educates community members about the affected population, and demonstrates that overdose impacts all demographics.
Stakeholders repeatedly express the importance of teamwork and connection building among those responding to overdose in Genesee County. It is possible to respond to overdose by each organization focusing on their content area, but when bonds form among organizations, resources and ideas can be pooled and passion for this work can be amplified. Access to the SOS dashboard and reports can enhance these relationships, with organizations continuing communication regarding their overdose response and encouraging use of the dashboard for other groups in the community. Specifically, these relationships can be strengthened through a) stakeholders attending community coalition meetings, b) sharing data reports with emergency personnel (e.g. ER or EMS staff) so they can better understand overdose trends, and c) interventions in emergency situations can be enhanced.
Near real-time data can be utilized in funding applications to provide evidence of the persistence of opioid overdose in the community. The data can be used to show potential funders the continued need for overdose response programs in the community and support the idea that particular locations need a greater concentration of response efforts.
Promising strategies for the use of SOS range from using the data to inform response broadly to utilizing the data for specific projects and programs. Public safety is prepared to use the SOS data to assist in establishing corresponding trends among human trafficking data to prevent further trafficking. Additionally, stakeholders have begun to generate ideas for other near real-time surveillance systems such as incidents of firearm violence. Stakeholders across Genesee County show how the use of SOS can result in innovative ideas to improve not only overdose response, but the community’s health as a whole.
Conclusion
With the introduction of a near real-time fatal and non-fatal opioid overdose surveillance system that provides geographic data for each incident, it is our hope that community stakeholders across the state of Michigan will use the system in their own communities to develop and implement best-fit strategies such as those described above. Future work should be done to evaluate these data-driven responses and to establish data-driven legislative policies that will work to end the opioid epidemic.