The links below contained detailed information for the upcoming 2017 Safe States Alliance Annual Meeting, taking place September 12-14, 2017 in Aurora, Colorado.
Please note:
- A total of five concurrent sessions will take place during the Annual Meeting, and there will be up to five breakouts occurring simultaneously during each of those concurrent sessions. Within each breakout, there will be up to four presentations that take place.
- This online system does not allow us to embed the individual presentations within each breakout. Please note the session presentations listed under each Concurrent Breakout title for associated content.
- The on-site mobile app WILL embed these sessions for ease of use.
- A printable, detailed agenda can be found on the 2017 Annual Meeting website.
- If you have any questions, please contact info@safestates.org
- All session times and locations are tentative and subject to change. Safe States will continue to update these details as changes take place.
Opioid Overdose Prevention Policy Curriculum to Enhance Professional and System Response
Learning Objectives
In this session, participants will:
- Identify the range of policy best practices to respond to systems of opioid overdose.
- Identify curriculum components needed to enhance professional capacity to respond to opioid overdose.
- Understand the utility of diagnosing policy gaps, weaknesses and implementation failures in an opioid overdose system
Statement of Purpose
Public health practitioners need to effectively apply innovative strategies and incorporate research evidence into real-world practice. To bridge the research-to-practice gap for opioid overdose prevention, we designed a 4-stage policy curriculum to address the multiple needs of adult learners, leverage their policy-based system awareness, provide tools and techniques to use in the workplace, and offer real-time feedback to shape their application of concepts and skills.
Methods/Approach
Using evidence-based strategies and adult-learning principles, we designed a series of three webinars that culminate in a 3-day in-person policy course that builds individual and team skills for policy-based opioid overdose prevention projects. Webinar #1 explained the opioid overdose problem from a federal and state perspective. Webinar #2 described best-practice strategies applied in the United States. Webinar #3 explained methods for collecting and documenting information about stakeholders of the problem and solutions. We developed the final 3-day workshop to ground participants in the policy process, and orient them to reading legislation, regulations, and analyzing bills. Activities provided practice diagnosing policy gaps, weaknesses and implementation failures while using sub-system mapping. Tools and templates provided structure for advocacy planning and framing messages for each team’s policy-based system response.
Results
The curriculum was piloted in April 2017 with 19 participants representing teams from 4 states and two counties. Instructors coached each team to help them apply the concepts, techniques and tools to advance their projects. Participants scored the workshop overall value at 3.6 (SD=0.2) on a 4-point Likert scale (0=no value to 4 = very valuable). The workshop increased participants’ self-assessed knowledge/skills an average of 48% across five learning objectives (range: 42% to 67%).
Conclusions & Significance to the Field
Professionals need consistent investment in training, technical assistance, and job-shaping to support their evolving needs for opioid overdose response. This 4-stage policy curriculum is an effective way to prepare state and local practitioners to apply policy diagnostic tools and policy-change strategies to influence the opioid overdose epidemic in their states and communities. The curriculum content provides instruction in the policy-related core competencies for public health professionals and injury and violence prevention.
Presenters
Carolyn Crump, PhD, UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health
Biography
Carolyn Crump, PhD is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She has over 35 years of experience working with federal, state, and local organizations and community-based groups to address health promotion and injury prevention related concerns. She is currently directing a project for the Bureau of Reclamation Pacific Northwest Region to assess and make recommendations to improve the safety culture of their workplace. She and her team work closely with the NC Division of Public Health Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention Section serving as facilitators, evaluation specialists, and consultants. She has taught graduate courses in Program Planning and Evaluation and Program Management and more recently co-developed and Introduction to Public Health Policy and the Policy Making Process for the MPH students in the Department of Health Behavior.