Trainings and Resources

Last year, the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) launched a resource meant to help local health departments (LHD) prevent or mitigate potentially traumatic events, known as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The Suicide, Overdose, and Adverse Childhood Experiences Prevention Capacity Assessment Tool (SPACECAT) allows LHDs to make an internal assessment of their capacity to address and prevent a still-growing public health issue.

The webinar held by NASTAD on October 26, 2022, 4:00-5:30pm featured a dynamic discussion on integrating harm reduction principles and practices, including naloxone distribution, safe disposal, and harm reduction supply access, within the community health care setting. Health centers across the country that offer these services as part of comprehensive care shared their experiences and the ways that service expansion can contribute to engagement and care access.

NASEMSO resource list for fire personnel impacted by COVID-19.

CDC created this communication toolkit to help public health professionals, health departments, community organizations, and healthcare systems and providers reach populations who may need COVID-19 prevention messaging in their native languages.

Since 1999, an estimated 841,000 people in the U.S. have died from a drug overdose. Beginning in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly exacerbated the overdose crisis resulting in a 30% increase in 2020 compared to 2019. The majority of overdose deaths in the U.S. involve opioids, including nearly 71% of all overdose deaths in 2019.3 Despite high rates of overdose across the nation, overdose and overdose death are preventable. However, people at risk of overdose often face significant challenges accessing treatment and navigating systems of care. Local and state health departments are well-suited to lead and support efforts to prevent and respond to overdose and to link people to evidence-based treatment and services. Peer support services (PSS) are a valuable component of a growing number of overdose response and linkage to care initiatives that can be implemented and supported by local and state health departments.

The National Council for Mental Wellbeing developed this toolkit with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The project team would like to thank the key informants who devoted their time, expertise and resources to inform this report at a challenging time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In spring 2021, pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors notified syringe services programs (SSPs) and partners that there would be significant interruptions in the supply of injectable/intramuscular (IM) naloxone. Currently, production and distribution delays are expected to last until fall 2021. This will specifically affect SSPs because IM naloxone is the most affordable formulation, and therefore is most commonly utilized by programs that distribute large volumes of naloxone to reduce fatal overdose rates. 

The United States is in the midst of an unprecedented opioid epidemic. In order to implement effective population-level response strategies to this epidemic, health departments and community-based organizations must understand both the size and characteristics of the local population affected. Local data regarding the opioid epidemic are sparse and don’t fully characterize the population of those most affected, such as people who inject drugs (PWID). Without these data, it is difficult to know which epidemic response strategies are meeting the most pressing community needs and whether services are delivered at the appropriate scale. For these reasons, we developed this toolkit for population size estimation with specific emphasis on applying population estimation methods among PWID in rural communities.

On February 2, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) issued an amendment to the emergency Declaration made last March in response to COVID-19. The amendment allows additional categories of health care professionals – including physicians, registered nurses, and practical nurses with recently expired licenses – to administer COVID-19 vaccinations.

The purpose of this Health Alert Network (HAN) Advisory is to alert public health departments, healthcare professionals, first responders, harm reduction organizations, laboratories, and medical examiners and coroners to— substantial increases in drug overdose deaths across the United States, primarily driven by rapid increases in overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids excluding methadone (hereafter referred to as synthetic opioids), likely illicitly manufactured fentanyl.