This four-part webinar series is designed to provide state and local decision makers, government agencies, public health practitioners, and community members with insight into tools and resources for selecting, adopting, and implementing policies to reduce overdose and other drug-related harm.
Language: English
Community Policies to Reduce Overdose and Other Drug-related Harm.
A modified Delphi process to identify experts’ perceptions of the most beneficial and harmful laws to reduce opioid-related harm
States have enacted multiple types of laws, with a variety of constituent provisions, in response to the opioid epidemic, often simultaneously. This temporal proximity and variation in state-to-state operationalization has resulted in significant challenges for empirical research on their effects. Thus, expert consensus can be helpful to classify laws and their provisions by their degree of helpfulness and impact. Overall, experts rated laws and provisions that facilitated harm reduction efforts and access to MOUD as most helpful. Laws and provisions rated as most harmful criminalized substance use and placed restrictions on access to MOUD. These ratings provide a foundation for evaluating the overall overdose policy environment for each state.
How the war on drugs impacts social determinants of health beyond the criminal legal system
While the health impacts of mass incarceration have been explored, less attention has been paid to how the “war on drugs” in the United States exacerbates many of the factors that negatively impact health and wellbeing. This paper examines the ways that “drug war logic” has become embedded in key SDOH and systems. We argue that, because the drug war has become embedded in these systems, medical practitioners can play a significant role in promoting individual and community health by reducing the impact of criminalisation upon healthcare service provision and by becoming engaged in policy reform efforts.
Legal Mapping of Harm Reduction Laws and Overdose Prevention Center Legislation
ASTHO, with support from CDC’s Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) cooperative agreement, developed an interactive resource visualizing state and territorial laws that support harm reduction activities as of January 1, 2023. This report highlights the public health importance of three harm reduction policies and practices to reduce overdoses: Facilitating community distribution of naloxone; Facilitating community distribution of fentanyl test strips (FTS); Overdose prevention centers.
Harm Reduction Laws in the United States
This brief is designed to help individuals and organizations better understand how the legal landscape in their state may impact access to harm reduction services and supplies, including overdose Good Samaritan laws, which provide limited protection from criminal sanctions to encourage people to call for help in an overdose emergency. Specifically, it covers laws related to syringe possession and distribution, naloxone access, statewide naloxone standing orders, and overdose Good Samaritan overdose protections in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Use the embedded hyperlink to navigate to New York!
Webinar – R Street Institute – Is Over the Counter Enough? Getting Naloxone to the People Who Need It Most
In this panel, experts in pharmacy, policy and harm reduction will help answer the question “Is over-the-counter naloxone enough to stop the overdose crisis?” They will discuss what intranasal naloxone’s OTC status does and does not do, as well as important next steps for regulators and policymakers working to curb overdose deaths in their communities and across the country.
Webinar – Distributing Low Barrier Naloxone in Emergency Departments
Emergency departments can learn how to build a simple, efficient, and effective model of dispensing naloxone from the ground up in this free, archived 1-hour webinar with multiple guest speakers in collaboration with National Harm Reduction Coalition.
Preventing opioid overdose with peer-administered naloxone: findings from a rural state
Findings support the feasibility of naloxone distribution to peer opioid and heroin users and provide recommendations for policy improvement, including effective and well-advertised Good Samaritan laws and links to treatment for opioid use disorder.
Comparing Projected Fatal Overdose Outcomes and Costs of Strategies to Expand Community-Based Distribution of Naloxone in Rhode Island
In this decision analytical model study evaluating the distribution of 10 000 additional naloxone kits annually in Rhode Island, the strategy focusing on distribution of naloxone according to geographic need to people who inject drugs resulted in the best outcomes at the lowest cost, averting an estimated 25.3% of opioid overdose deaths at an incremental cost of $27 312 per opioid overdose death averted.
