Abstract
BackgroundThe opioid epidemic is a rapidly growing public health concern in the USA, as the number of overdose deaths continues to increase each year. One strategy for combating the rising number of overdoses is through opioid overdose prevention programs (OOPPs).ObjectiveTo evaluate the effectiveness of an innovative OOPP, with changes in knowledge and attitudes serving as the primary outcome measures.MethodsThe OOPP was developed by a group of medical students under guidance from faculty advisors. Training sessions focused on understanding stigmatizing factors of opioid use disorder (OUD), as well as protocols for opioid overdose reversal through naloxone administration. Pre- and post-surveys were partially adapted from the opioid overdose attitudes and knowledge scales and administered to all participants. Paired t-tests were conducted to assess differences between pre- and post-surveys.ResultsA total of 440 individuals participated in the training; 381 completed all or the majority of the survey. Participants came from a diverse set of backgrounds, ages, and experiences. All three knowledge questions showed significant improvements. For attitude questions, significant improvements were found in all three questions evaluating confidence, two of three questions assessing attitudes towards overdose reversal, and four of five questions evaluating stigma and attitudes towards individuals with OUD.ConclusionsOur innovative OOPP was effective not only in increasing knowledge but also in improving attitudes towards overdose reversal and reducing stigma towards individuals with OUD. Given the strong improvements in attitudes towards those with OUD, efforts should be made to incorporate the unique focus on biopsychosocial and sociohistorical components into future OOPPs.
Highlights
The opioid epidemic is a rapidly growing public health concern in the USA, as the number of overdose deaths continues to increase each year
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One method to mitigate the decades-long trend of increasing opioid overdose deaths may be accomplished through naloxone and opioid overdose prevention programs (OOPPs)
Summary
The opioid epidemic is a rapidly growing public health concern in the USA, as the number of overdose deaths continues to increase each year. One strategy for combating the rising number of overdoses is through opioid overdose prevention programs (OOPPs). The opioid epidemic is a rapidly growing public health crisis in the USA, with over 500,000 deaths attributed to opioid overdoses since the mid 1990s. There has been a trend towards increasing death rates over the past 2 decades, as opioid-related overdose deaths per 100,000 persons rose from 2.20 to 13.21 between 2000 and 2017 [3]. One method to mitigate the decades-long trend of increasing opioid overdose deaths may be accomplished through naloxone and opioid overdose prevention programs (OOPPs). There have been a myriad of studies published evaluating the efficacy of naloxone and OOPPs, some of which are briefly reviewed here (Table 1) [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36]
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