Pennsylvania's Community Coordination Strategy to Reduce Opioid Overdose Deaths.

The Pennsylvania Opioid Overdose Reduction Technical Assistance Center (ORTAC) was developed to provide community-level support across Pennsylvania with the goal of reducing the opioid-related overdose death (ODD) rate via coalition building/coordination and tailored technical assistance. This study evaluates the initial effects of ORTAC engagement on county-level opioid ODD reductions. Using quasi-experimental difference-in-difference models, we compared ODD per 100,000 population per quarter between 2016 and 2019 in the 29 ORTAC-implementing counties against the 19 nonengaged counties while controlling for county-level time-varying confounders (e.g., naloxone administration by law enforcement). Before ORTAC implementation, the average ODD/100,000 was 8.92 per 100,000 (SD = 3.62) in ORTAC counties and 5.62 per 100,000 (SD = 2.17) for the 19 comparison counties. Relative to the pre-study rate, there was an estimated 30% decrease in the ODD/100,000 within implementing counties after the first two quarters of ORTAC implementation. In the second year after ORTAC implementation, the estimated difference between ORTAC and non-ORTAC counties reached a high of 3.80 fewer deaths per 100,000. Overall, analyses indicated that ORTAC's service was associated with avoiding 1,818 opioid ODD in the 29 implementing counties in the 2 years following implementation. Findings reinforce the impact of coordinating communities around addressing the ODD crisis. Future policy efforts should provide a suite of overdose reduction strategies and intuitive data structures that can be tailored to individual communities' needs.

Citation

Renee M Cloutier, Arnie Aldridge, Glenn Hoffman, Kristina L Boyd, Erh-Hsuan Wang, Kiandra Foster, Karley Snyder, William Dowd, Janice L Pringle. Pennsylvania's Community Coordination Strategy to Reduce Opioid Overdose Deaths. Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs. 2023 Jul;84(4):605-614

Mesh Tags

Substances

PMID: 36971737

search → result