This guide was drawn from HEALing Communities Study (HCS) learnings to-date and expert insights to provide guidance regarding implementation of ORCCA menu strategies.

SAMHSA’s updated Overdose Prevention and Response Toolkit provides guidance to a wide range of individuals on preventing and responding to an overdose. The toolkit also emphasizes that harm reduction and access to treatment are essential aspects of overdose prevention.

The toolkit, designed to augment overdose prevention and reversal training, provides guidance on the role of opioid overdose reversal medications, including naloxone and nalmefene, and how to respond to an overdose. It also contains appendices for specific audiences, including people who use drugs (PWUD), people who take...

Background:

People who have problems with using opioids or other drugs and inject them have shorter lives than most people. Liver diseases, especially, contribute to this. Checking liver stiffness might help find liver problems early. This study looks at how common liver disease is in people who use drugs and how different factors like types of drugs used, hepatitis C, alcohol, weight, age, diabetes, and cholesterol affect liver stiffness.

Methods:

From May 2017 to March 2022, data was collected from 676 people in Western Norway. Most were getting treatment for opioid addiction, while...

Background

There is little research on lifetime trauma exposure among individuals undergoing medication treatment for opioid use disorder (MOUD). A multisite study examined the prevalence of lifetime trauma and explored differences based on gender, PTSD status, and chronic pain.

Methods

A cross-sectional study examined baseline data from participants (N = 303) enrolled in a randomised controlled trial of a mind–body intervention as an adjunct to MOUD. All participants were stabilised on MOUD. Measures included the Trauma Life Events Questionnaire (TLEQ), the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI)...

Background

Physical or mental health commorbidities are common among people with substance use disorders undergoing opioid agonist therapy. Exercise provides many health benefits and can be used both as a preventive and treatment strategy. However, exercise programs for people with substance use disorders on opioid agonist therapy are limited. This study aims to explore their experiences with physical activity, as well as the perceived barriers and facilitators.

Method

Fourteen qualitative interviews were conducted with individuals receiving opioid agonist therapy in outpatient...

Background

People with opioid use disorder (OUD) are frequently in contact with the court system and have markedly higher rates of fatal opioid overdose. Opioid intervention courts (OIC) were developed to address increasing rates of opioid overdose among court defendants by engaging court staff in identification of treatment need and referral for opioid-related services and building collaborations between the court and OUD treatment systems. The study goal was to understand implementation barriers and facilitators in referring and engaging OIC clients in OUD treatment.

Methods

Semi...

Purpose

As deaths from the illicit drug poisoning crisis continue to rise in Canada, increasing the number of healthcare professionals qualified to effectively prescribe opioids could be beneficial. The willingness of family medicine residents to undertake structured training in prescribing opioids for Opioid Agonist Treatment (OAT) and pain management have not been well described.

Materials and methods

Family medicine residents (n = 20) in British Columbia, Canada, were asked about their experience with and willingness to enrol in OAT training. Informed by the Consolidated Framework...

The ASSIST package, which consists of a brief questionnaire, a guide for health professionals on how to use the questionnaire in detecting and responding to substance use and also a self-help manual for cutting down or stopping substance use, is the result of more than 10-years work by WHO and an international group of researchers in the framework of the WHO ASSIST project. It is WHO’s response to the growing demand for guidance on how to best manage problems of substance use in non specialist health care settings. This approach, quick and easy to learn, useful for all substances including...

Background: Physical health problems are common in people receiving opioid agonist treatment (OAT). A study was conducted on these health issues in OAT patients in the Czech Republic and Norway from 2010 to 2019, with a focus on gender differences.

Methods: In this study, it was a population-based cohort study that linked multiple health records to investigate physical diseases (using ICD-10 codes) in patients receiving OAT in the Czech Republic (4,280 patients) and Norway (11,389 patients) from 2010 to 2019. A gender-stratified analysis was performed.

Results: The study found that both...