Policymakers and community leaders play an important role in addressing opioids in our communities. This page highlights the most recently added resources specifically targeting elected and appointed government officials and staff members, members of the law enforcement community and first responders, and employees and volunteers of organizations. These resources, identified with orange tiles, include policy roadmaps, implementation guides, toolkits, education materials, sample legislation and other materials that can help you design and implement effective programs to prevent and address the consequences of opioid crisis.
If you’d like to submit materials for inclusion consideration or suggest a future featured topic, please visit CLOUD’s call for submissions page.
This 25 page document on heroin includes information of interest to patients and caregivers, policy makers, and state and local community leaders. Published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in 2018, it covers topics such as scope of heroin use in the United States, the effects of heroin use including medical
Judges and judicial personnel discuss the role of the courts in improving the child welfare system by strengthening families and using trauma informed treatments in the judicial system. This is an hour long recording of a conversation between judges, officials from the Children’s Bureau, and the National Center
Louie Miceli started using prescription opioids after a sports injury. In this video, Louie’s mother and friend speak of Louie and how his prescription eventually led to addiction, the use of heroin, and his death from overdose in 2012. Produced by the National Safety Council in 2014.
This half hour video educates primary care providers about treating pain with an emphasis on assessing patients for their risks for opioid abuse and considering alternative non-opioid treatments for pain. Produced in 2015 by the National Safety Council, the video is a presentation by Dr. Don Teater, medical advisor at the Safety Council.
This 5 minute video from the National Safety Council describes the coordinated, collaborative response to opioid overdoses in Madison, Wisconsin. The video highlights how community collaboration created a multifaceted response to the overdose epidemic and briefly describes programs that local leaders could potentially adopt in their communities.
This website presents an interactive data chart on drug overdoses in the United States from the National Safety Council. Users can compare data on overdoses over time (1999-2017), by drug type, age, and gender.
From this website, the National Academies of Medicine 2019 report “Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Save Lives” can be downloaded for free. Also available are a press release, executive summaries of the report’s conclusions and highlights, and a social media toolkit for dissemination.
The website for the National Judicial Opioid Task Force sponsored by the National Center for State Courts includes links to publications, webinars, training modules, and other materials.
This website from the American Medical Association (AMA) is the home of their opioid task force and includes task force policy recommendations as well as information about topics such as naloxone, substance use disorder treatment, as well as the activities of state AMA chapters to address the opioid crisis.
The STOP initiative from AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) is intended to help reduce unsafe opioid prescribing by providing a system to measure adherence to opioid prescribing guidelines using insurance claims data. This report describes other strategies health plans may use to reduce inappropriate and unsafe prescriptions.