Leveraging Community Collaboration to Implement Harm Reduction Strategies

While establishing overdose fatality review (OFR) teams in Michigan, the Michigan Public Health Institute has naturally fallen into the model of working collaboratively with a review team and a separate community action group that drives forward the recommendations presented by the review team. These community action groups are existing groups that meet in each county, such as an opioid task force or a substance use coalition. Muskegon County’s OFR team works with the Muskegon Opiate Task Force acting as the community action group. Following each quarterly review, an infographic displaying the recommendations that resulted from each review is created. One case helped identify a municipality where there was a disproportionately high count of overdoses happening in that region’s hotels. Because of this finding, the team recommended the availability of Narcan at hotel front desks and common areas. The Muskegon Opiate Task Force, along with the implementation of this recommendation, placed “I Can Narcan” stickers on external windows of hotels and other establishments to indicate the presence of Narcan in that building. This allows external bystanders to take note of the presence of Narcan in a particular building, but especially for those who are using at the hotel. The review team has made several other recommendations around increasing access to naloxone, such as training all law enforcement officers to carry and administer naloxone. The task force continues to collaborate with law enforcement agencies to move this recommendation forward, and since the first review team meeting, the task force has helped change the policy and practice of one law enforcement agency in its jurisdiction.