This is a 2015 report compiled by a multidisciplinary team focused on addressing the opioid crisis using three guiding principles: informing action with evidence, intervening comprehensively, and promoting appropriate and safe use of prescription opioids.

This is a comprehensive report that lays out the 56 recommendations made by the commission appointed by the Trump Administration to address the opioid crisis. After giving an overview of the opioid crisis and its wide-ranging impact, recommendations are made in the areas of federal funding, research, opioid addiction and overdose prevention, treatment, and recovery. 

This is an academic paper that analyzes stakeholder interviews to explore strategies to sustain time-limited opioid grants and determine barriers and facilitators. Financing and reimbursement, service integration, and workforce capacity were the most cited barriers, and status in state government structure, public support, and spending flexibility were noted as key facilitators. Strong partnerships were highlighted as essential components in strategies.  

This is a report from the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House that discusses supply and demand factors that have driven the opioid crisis. Initially driving prescription opioid deaths, prescription opioid prices fell in conjunction with expanded government health care coverage and a rising market share of generic opioids. The second wave of the opioid crisis was largely driven by an expansion in the supply of illicit opioids, reducing their prices, along with medical and public health steps implemented to reduce opioid prescribing, likely leading to an increased demand for illicitly manufactured opioids. 

This publicly-available presentation from the Maine Rural Health Research Center (author John Gale) focuses on prevention, treatment, and recovery strategies that rural communities, particularly rural hospitals, can engage in to address the opioid crisis. Additionally, examples of existing programs for each strategy are discussed in the presentation. 

This Council of Economic Advisors report from 2017 estimates the economic cost of opioid overdose deaths using conventional economic estimates for valuing life routinely used by U.S. Federal agencies. It also adjusts for underreporting of opioids in overdose deaths, includes heroin-related fatalities, and incorporates nonfatal costs of opioid misuse. 

This is a report from the Police Executive Research Forum that provides recommendations on how law enforcement can better address the opioid crisis in their communities.  

This is an informative report from the Bipartisan Policy Center that gives an overview of federal opioid funding, and where the money is going in the continuum of care. It also gives a breakdown by state with overviews of several selected states.  

This is a report from the Bipartisan Policy Center that tracks spending targeted to address the opioid crisis across the federal government for fiscal year 2019 and provides insight into how funds are being spent at the state and county level, with specific case studies on six states - Ohio, Arizona, Tennessee, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Washington. 

This is an academic paper that evaluated an intervention in Missouri to educate law enforcement and other first responders on the risks of fentanyl exposure, where misinformation has led to amplified fears of incidental exposure and possible delays in responding to overdoses. This pilot program showed positive results in correcting first responders’ potentially dangerous misconception that they can overdose from touching fentanyl. 

This policy brief from the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) reviews several key opportunities to remedy the problem of the lack of evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder in rural communities. It emphasizes a dual focus on making medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) an option in all rural communities and fully funding rural mental health infrastructure. There is also an extensive set of policy recommendations in this document. 

This is a toolkit from National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center that provides a wide range of information on the opioid crisis, what tribal communities are doing to address the issue, and access to documents that other communities can use to implement a response.