Overdose Prevention 101 Guide

How to get started with overdose prevention work in your community.

 

Overdose Prevention Strategies

Instead of reinventing the wheel, it is important to draw on the large number of evidence-based strategies shown to reduce overdose deaths. Below we outline core strategies that align with our framework for overdose prevention:

Prevent New Addictions

Manage Pain Safely

Treat Substance Use Disorders

Stop Overdose Deaths

Prevent New Addictions

Prevention programs and public awareness campaigns can prevent or delay substance misuse by equipping individuals and families with the knowledge and skills to make healthy choices. These programs address substance use, but also promote overall health and wellbeing.

Examples of this include:

  • Upstream prevention and education

  • Youth engagement

  • Safer prescribing practices

  • Drug disposal and takeback

  • Trauma-informed communities

  • Behavioral health integration

  • Screening and referrals for SUDs

 

Manage Pain Safely

Many people first develop an addiction to opioids through pills that were prescribed to them for pain, or ones they purchased illicitly. Now that clinicians are more aware of the need to prescribe safely, there is an enormous need to help those living with chronic pain – both physical and mental – manage their pain safely. Some of these strategies include:

  • Alternative pain therapies

  • Tapering high dosages

  • Limiting opioids + sedatives

  • Behavioral health services, including therapy

 

Treat Substance Use Disorders

Abundant evidence shows that medications for addiction treatment (MAT), including methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone, all reduce opioid use and opioid use disorder-related symptoms. More importantly, use of MAT has been shown to reduce the risk of fatal overdoses by 50%. These lifesaving medications can be prescribed by addiction specialists, emergency department clinicians, and primary care providers, including via telehealth.

Key strategies to increase access to treatment include:

  • Manage pushback to MAT

  • Conduct outreach to encourage local clinicians, emergency departments, first responders, and jails to offer MAT

  • Promote free virtual DEA license renewal trainings (formerly X-Waiver trainings)

  • Offer contingency management program for Stimulant Use Disorders

  • Hire substance use navigators in local emergency departments

 

Stop Overdose Deaths

To save lives, every community needs to endorse harm reduction principles and strategies. Harm reduction is aimed at reducing the negative consequences associated with drug use. It is also a movement for social justice built on a belief in, and respect for, the rights of people who use drugs. Harm reduction meets people where they are at and supports the spectrum of strategies to reduce negative consequences from safer use, managed use, to abstinence.

Examples of this include:

  • Naloxone training and distribution

  • Syringe services programs

  • Fentanyl testing strips

  • Supervised consumption services

  • Harm reduction approach