HEALing Communities Study: Developing and Testing an Integrated Approach to Address the Opioid Crisis (Research Sites) (UM1 - Clinical Trial Required)

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), in partnership with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is soliciting cooperative agreement applications with the intention of ultimately funding up to three research sites and one data coordinating center (DCC) to participate in the 'HEALing Communities Study': Developing and Testing an Integrated Approach to Address the Opioid Crisis. The HEALing Communities Study will test the immediate impact of implementing an integrated set of evidence-based interventions across healthcare, behavioral health, justice, and other community-based settings to prevent and treat opioid misuse and Opioid Use Disorders (OUD) within highly affected communities. Highly affected communities of interest could include counties or cities within states that are burdened with higher than average rates of overdose mortality and opioid-related morbidity, and other complications. Combined, all the communities participating in a single research site application must demonstrate having experienced at least 150 opioid related overdose fatalities in the past year, based on the most recent complete year of data available (15% of these deaths must be in rural communities). States within the top third for age-adjusted drug overdose death rates in 2016, (per the Centers for Disease Control) are of special interest. The integrated set of evidence-based prevention and treatment interventions should be designed to achieve the following goals: reduce overdose fatalities, and events; decrease the incidence of OUD; and increase the number of individuals receiving medication-assisted treatment, retained in treatment beyond 6 months, and receiving recovery support services compared to baseline.