Addressing the Opioid Overdose Epidemic via Community, Law Enforcement, and Research Collaborations

Event description
- Academic events
- Community service
- Free
- Graduation
- Health and wellness
- Professional and career development
- Science
Fatal and non-fatal overdose from opioids continues to be a significant public health crisis in the United States. The state of Ohio has consistently ranked in the top five in the country in highest rates of fatality from overdose beginning in 2014 with heroin and now in 2024 with fentanyl and its many synthetic analogues present in the drug supply. This presentation will provide an overview of the work addressing fatal and non-fatal overdose in Cuyahoga County, OH that began in 2014 with support from the NIJ focused on intensive coding of decedent toxicologies and medicolegal histories as well as tracking over several years the work of law enforcement's Heroin Involved Death Investigation (HIDI) team. Efforts highlighted the need for death scene integrity to link cause of death drug to its source to improve investigations and prosecutions of major drug traffickers. This work led to support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to establish and maintain (now in its sixth year) with our county Medical Examiner the data subcommittee of the U.S. Attorney's Heroin-Opiate Task Force. A series of proof of concept pilot projects will be presented illustrating how access, sharing and utilization of data can inform prevention, interdiction, intervention and policy. These two federal grants led to ongoing CDC funding in their Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) initiative that focuses on prevention, surveillance, and linking non-fatal persons to treatment. OD2A is a collaboration among 14 community partners including public health, law enforcement, hospital systems, peer supporters and treatment providers. Additional activities that have emanated from this work include a pilot study of in-depth interviews with 89 persons with lived experience assessing facilitators and barriers to treatment and recovery, ongoing work with the eleven Ohio Urban Minority Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Outreach Program (UMADAOP) groups, and a new state supported training and technical assistance Center of Excellence on Substance Use Disorders. For each of these initiatives research and evaluation findings will be presented as well as how collaborations across multiple systems and disciplines can be effective in addressing the public health challenges surfaced by the opioid overdose crisis.
Presented by Dr. Daniel Flannery, Distinguished University Professor and Dr. Semi J. and Ruth W. Begun Professor and Director of the Begun Center for Violence Prevention, Research and Education in the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences (MSASS) at Case Western Reserve University.