Drug Overdose Prevention

The Kentucky Perinatal Quality Collaborative (KyPQC) is a statewide network of birthing hospitals and stakeholder teams collaborating on improving the quality of care during pregnancy, delivery, and throughout the first year of life.

The Rural Center of Excellence on Recovery Housing (RCOE-RH) focuses on increasing the quality and availability of, and access to, recovery housing in more than 100 rural counties within the service area of Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, and West Virginia.

FindHelpNowKY.org was created by the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center in partnership with the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, the Kentucky Department for Behavioral Health, Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities, and the KY HELP line.

FindHelpNowKY.org is a locator for substance use disorder (SUD) facilities, recovery houses, mental health providers who are actively taking new clients and free naloxone sites. This user-friendly and easy-to-understand online referral-based intervention can improve clinical workflow and increase timely access to SUD treatment and information.

SUD treatment facility owners and operators create and manage a profile page for each of their locations using an administrative dashboard. Each facility profile affords designated personnel the opportunity to add details such as accepted payment methods, populations served, facility policies, treatment types and availability, and over 50 other fields. To ensure the completeness and accuracy of information, facilities must request publication on the website and have their profiles reviewed by website administrators before being included in the live search results.

• WEBSITE: FindHelpNowKY.org
• FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/FindHelpNowKY/
• TWITTER: https://twitter.com/findhelpnowky
• INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/findhelpnowky/
• Data request/questions, contact mail@findhelpnowky.org

The mission of the Kentucky Drug Overdose Surveillance program is to provide timely reports on the morbidity and mortality associated with drug overdose in the Commonwealth.

KIPRC works with local health departments, community stakeholders, and local and statewide agencies to develop evidence-based initiatives that address issues associated with substance misuse, abuse, and overdose. KIPRC maintains multiple databases that lend insight into injury patterns in Kentucky, including the datasets of emergency department visits, inpatient hospitalizations, death certificates, prescription drug monitoring, and workers' compensation claims.

These data are used to develop presentations on local and regional trends and harm reduction efforts, to identify specific targets for evidence-based prevention programs, to recruit and retain community stakeholders in the fight against drug overdose, and to help translate research into actionable interventions.

The integrated K-SURE collaborative regularly produces data reports/briefs to identify hot spots and drug threats within the state of Kentucky. These data reports/briefs inform public health and public safety prevention and response activities and are instrumental in funding of other Kentucky State Police drug-interdiction grants.

Access to Recovery (ATR) is a linkage strategy supported by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that was implemented by Kentucky in 2019 to link vulnerable populations in 25 counties with opioid and/or stimulant substance use disorders (SUDs) to recovery support services (RSSs), such as evidence-based recovery housing, transportation, and employment, and other community services using a voucher system and, if needed, relink clients to RSSs following resumption of illicit substance use. Priority clients set by Kentucky Access to Recovery (KATR) to receive RSSs are those recently released from incarceration, veterans, and those who are pregnant/postpartum or parenting children under the age of 18.

The Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center, as a bona fide agent for the Kentucky Department for Public Health, collaborates with state, university, and community partners to implement the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) prevention efforts.

The Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center, as a bona fide agent for the Kentucky Department for Public Health, collaborates with state, university, and community partners to implement the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) surveillance strategies, which includes timely analysis of drug overdose emergency department encounters, fatal drug overdoses using multiple data sources, and an innovative public health surveillance strategy using remnant serum and/or urine samples from patients treated at the University of Kentucky Medical Center Emergency Department for suspected drug overdoses. KyOD2A is a five-year grant that began implementation in September 2023.

This collaboration between the University of Kentucky and the University of North Carolina will use advanced methods to determine what doses of buprenorphine best prevent overdose and death. In this project, health care records from Kentucky will be linked with dispensing and death certificates to create a specially designed database that allows the researchers to answer questions of cause and effect.

Contact: Daniela C. Moga at daniela.moga@uky.edu