The Brandeis Opioid Resource Connector serves community stakeholders working to combat the opioid epidemic. It is a product of the Brandeis Opioid Policy Research Collaborative.
The heart of the Brandeis Opioid Resource Connector is our curated list of Program Models that address the many aspects of the opioid crisis.
Successful responses to the opioid crisis involve coordination among agencies and stakeholders within a community, ensuring that essential interventions across the continuum of care are implemented with available resources.
Understanding the numbers behind the opioid epidemic, and demonstrating how it affects a community, are critical steps in determining what approaches should be prioritized, and in informing local efforts.
This section contains links to a curated list of external resources related to actionable responses to the opioid crisis.
An important step in countering the opioid crisis is to prevent new cases.
Prevention often includes providing treatment providers, educators, parents, and potential substance users with the knowledge and skills they need to prevent harmful behaviors.
Research indicates that comprehensive, effective treatment for opioid use disorder increases one’s chances of wellness.
There is a range of evidence-based approaches from FDA-approved medications to cognitive-behavioral interventions to mutual aid groups. Treatment planning should be tailored to the individual.
We know that opioid use disorder can be a chronic condition and recurrence is common. Recovery is the process by which people sustain wellness by focusing on improving one’s health, sense of purpose, and connection with community.
Harm reduction aims to reduce the adverse health, economic, and social consequences of substance use. Effective harm reduction approaches are designed to be practical, feasible, and safe.
This report was generated through a legislative mandate by linking multiple data sets in Massachusetts. The aim was to better understand the opioid problem and those at most risk.
The prevalence of opioid use disorder, as well as nonfatal and fatal overdoses, are estimated and at-risk populations are identified. The results of this report are able to inform policy and stimulate research.
This is a report from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network that explores the relationship between childhood exposure to traumatic events and a variety of substance use-related behaviors as well as the impact of the opioid crisis on children and families. Recommendations related to prevention and treatment are made and resources are provided.
This study examined the relationship between illicit drug use and 10 categories of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and total number of ACEs (ACE score). The ACE score had a strong graded relationship to the risk of drug initiation from early adolescence into adulthood and to problems with drug use, drug addiction, and parenteral use.
The persistent graded relationship between the ACE score and initiation of drug use for 4 successive birth cohorts dating back to 1900 suggests that the effects of adverse childhood experiences transcend secular changes such as increased availability of drugs, social attitudes toward drugs, and recent massive expenditures and public information campaigns to prevent drug use.
This is an academic paper that interviewed providers to better understand the role that hospitals have played in the opioid crisis. In addition to reported settings where opioids have been overprescribed, the clinicians recommended that hospitals respond to the opioid crisis through patient education, provider education, and strengthening the hospital leadership efforts to decrease inappropriate opioid use.
A two-page resource from the CMS with opioid oral morphine milligram equivalent (MME) conversion factors for a wide range of prescription opioids.
This report details recommendations for the US government on how to optimize mandatory and discretionary spending on opioid related population health outcomes. The author's recommendations fall under the four categories of mandatory spending, discretionary spending, data and metrics, and governance.
This report outlines the impact of synthetic opioid trafficking from the individual and economic perspective. The authors provide several suggestions on next steps the U.S government can take as well as relevant data to support these points. The five main pillars of this outline are policy coordination and implementation, supply reduction, demand reduction through public health methods, international cooperation, as well as research and monitoring.
This report from the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) presents the study results of interviews and focus groups to explore how the opioid crisis is uniquely affecting diverse Appalachian communities, and to identify effective content and messaging strategies that Appalachian community-based organizations can use to support opioid misuse prevention, treatment, and recovery
After describing the key findings of the impact of the opioid crisis on Appalachian communities and attitudes towards people with opioid use disorder (OUD), the report provides specific communication strategies that communities can use to educate the general public, reduce stigma, and prevent opioid misuse and OUD.
This is an academic paper that gives an overview of the HEALing Communities Study to address the opioid crisis, with a focus on how this multistate, community-engaged research project used community coalitions to tailor evidence-based practices to meet the unique needs of the communities involved in the study.
This guide from SAMHSA highlights research on community engagement in substance use prevention and provides practical guidance for implementing and evaluating community engagement strategies and activities. It provides an overview of how community engagement can play a pivotal role in the uptake of evidence-base prevention broadly across the substance use prevention system
This paper summarizes community forums that were held at nine locations throughout rural northeast Minnesota from October 2015 through March 2018. Each forum was planned by a university researcher and a planning team composed of community leaders and local public health officials and included a variety of professional speakers from health care, public health, law enforcement, and treatment and recovery, as well as individuals from the community who shared their own personal stories of addiction and recovery.
The different ingredients of a successful forum that increased community collaboration are discussed within this document.
This is a presentation from the South East Area Health Education Center (SEAHEC) in Wilmington, NC that describes the collaborative nature of the community opioid response in this area. There is specific focus on the different types of stakeholders involved.
