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 Kent 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: Targeted Overdose Response
Community outreach stakeholders identified the ability to target specific locations with overdose response resources as a promising strategy to enhance their outreach and prevention efforts in Kent County. Through identification of locations with a greater occurrence of overdose, community outreach stakeholders can more efficiently distribute available resources and more effectively tailor response efforts to each location.
“If we notice that a particular area is having a high number of overdoses, we can help…to get naloxone to that area, do some education with some of the businesses because we stop and develop relationships with them, as well, and educate them on what to watch for.”
Outreach and Prevention Organization
Barriers to Targeted Overdose Response
- Limited resources create waitlists for those seeking treatment: A large barrier facing community outreach stakeholders is the overwhelming number of patients who are seeking substance use disorder treatment. Often, outreach specialists have individuals who are ready and willing to seek treatment, but who are met with waitlists at treatment facilities.
- Stigma persists in areas of high overdose burden: As many other stakeholders’ encounter, stigma persists as an issue in the community. This stigma may be particularly present in areas of high overdose in which individuals may not have access to education or information on where they can seek help.
Near Real-Time Data Impact on Targeted Response
- Use near real-time data to identify locations with high overdose burden: Community outreach stakeholders recognize the importance of gaining access to near real-time data to target their overdose response efforts in locations with a high burden of overdose. For example, identifying areas with a high burden of overdose and deploying their mobile response unit directly to those locations. This brings resources directly to those in need, with the intention of decreasing overdose fatality and increasing the community’s ability to access services. Similarly, stakeholders involved with homeless outreach teams may use data to more effectively locate populations of homeless individuals who are at-risk for overdose.
- Focus community education efforts using location data: Near real-time data may also be implemented in one stakeholder’s organizational prevention department to conduct outreach to school districts located in regions with a high overdose burden. The ability to recognize locations where intervention may be most beneficial is critical to outreach in a community that is continuously changing and developing.
Promising Strategy 2: Partnership and Community Building
One of the most critical factors in strengthening overdose response efforts, recognized by community outreach stakeholders, is building partnerships between organizations, and encouraging a sense of community among those working in opioid overdose prevention and response. Among stakeholders in Kent County, there is a solid sense of community already, with room to grow and strengthen bonds for a more cohesive response to opioid overdose.
Barriers to Partnership and Community Building
- Strained community relationships weaken community response to overdose: The mistrust of law enforcement by community members is often preventative to building strong partnerships within the community. This mistrust is exacerbated by the refusal of some law enforcement entities to participate in overdose response efforts, such as carrying naloxone.
- Weakened communication among community partners diminishes the impact outreach organizations have on overdose prevention: Community outreach stakeholders have also found that ineffective and sporadic communication between community organizations further prevents strong partnerships, among both organizations and community members, from being built.
- Limited funding sources prevents outreach organizations from expanding their overdose response and prevention efforts: A lack of funding also acts as a barrier to partnership building. To effectively bring community partners together in a new project or program that would enhance their ability to respond to and prevent overdose, stakeholders need additional funding that may not be currently available to them.
“Kent County is a really tight community, and there are a lot of outlets for those systems all to be pulled together. Obviously, there’s always room to strengthen those relationships, and I think there’s a lot of room for the treatment and prevention world to communicate better with law enforcement, with MDOC, and emergency response, like EMS and fire. It’s easy for us to get siloed and think about the therapists and recovery coaches who are out doing the work, but a lot of this work is being done by police officers, firefighters and paramedics, so making sure that they have the access to training, a network communicating, and that we have a good collaborative partnership [is important].”
Outreach and Prevention Stakeholder
Near Real-Time Data Impact on Partnership and Community Building
- Communicate using near real-time overdose data as a shared source of overdose incident information: Near real-time data assists in more efficient communication among community partners and allows for existing resources to be deployed based on need and on which community partner is best equipped to respond.
- Participate in existent coalitions and engage with new partners using near real-time data: With a greater team effort, a larger number of locations with a high burden of overdose can be tended to in the community. Community outreach stakeholders return to the Kent County Opioid Task Force (KCTOF) as the entity that will help bring overdose response and prevention partners together. The presence of the KCTOF, and each partner’s use of SOS near real-time data, is viewed as a great advantage in Kent County’s efforts in strengthening partnership and community building.