Public awareness and education campaigns play an important role in the fight against addiction. These campaigns provide community members with tools and information about the risks of prescription and illicit opioids, substance use and misuse, and treatment resources to prevent or reduce substance use and misuse and overdose deaths. Community education can also help dispel common myths about substance use and misuse that perpetuate stigma and discourage people from seeking treatment. Campaigns employ a variety of media (e.g., billboards and print ads, digital-banner ads/websites, television/radio public service announcements, social media, brochures, posters) and target messaging to their audiences (e.g., teens or older adults).
COSSAP supports activities that:
Implement public awareness and education campaigns to increase knowledge about illicit substances and the risks associated with their use and misuse.
Implement media campaigns that expose a high proportion of the public to messages about substance use disorder using a variety of media, including television, radio, print, the internet, and social media.
COSSAP grantees expanding public awareness about opioid, stimulant, and substance use and misuse
In Beaver County, Pennsylvania, accidental overdose deaths increased by 240 percent from 2014 to 2016, and more than 600 naloxone reversals were reported in 2016. Beaver County is also the first county in the region to report an overdose death from carfentanil, an analog of the synthetic opioid analgesic fentanyl, 10,000 times more potent than morphine. In response, Beaver County will implement a program to analyze the underlying causes of opioid misuse and to create a data exchange system for use by the Criminal Justice Advisory Board, the Sequential Intercept Model Committee, and the Drug Coalition to influence policy. Additional goals include evaluating outreach, prevention, and treatment efforts and to work to expand prescription drug monitoring. Townsend Associates LLC will serve as the project’s research partner.
Dayton, Ohio, will enhance the Get Recovery Options Working (GROW) program. GROW is a coordinated multidisciplinary response team that includes the Dayton Police Department, Dayton Fire Department, and peer recovery specialists. Dr. Mary Huber from Wright State University will serve as the research partner for the proposed project. The applicant agreed to provide data through the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP).
St. Mary’s County Health Department in Maryland will work with other community agencies to expand the data that are used to support the Opioid Intervention Team. The utilization of Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP), Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP), and first responder data will be increased. In addition, the agency will increase the multidisciplinary engagements with community organizations and neighboring jurisdictions and increase recovery support services and educational opportunities for prescribers and patients.
