Agenda 05-06-25; 6-a - Opioid Advisory Committee Settlement Fund Use Recommendations

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111 Orange County through a selection of data-driven locations with a high risk of opioid overdoses. This initiative will include installing emergency naloxone boxes (similar to public-use AEDs and EpiPens) in locations that were sites of overdoses in 2020-2023. These efforts will initially focus on parking garages and public spaces, with further locations determined through ongoing collaboration with Orange County PORT. We plan to initiate this project during Summer 2025. This project would build local infrastructure to respond to the opioid crisis by significantly increasing access to overdose resources in our community. We will commit to continuously restocking these boxes throughout and beyond the proposed funding period. 4. Improve and streamline referrals: During the prior fiscal year we strengthened our connections with local programs providing resources that may be helpful for our participants such as free primary care, dental care, counseling and mental health care, and STI and HIV testing. We have previously referred participants to these resources on an as-needed basis upon request or based on volunteers' assessment of participant needs. In this grant period, we will seek to streamline and increase the frequency of referrals by integrating a standardized checkout form for our distribution shifts that will include referrals as items to offer every participant. This will increase frequency of referrals, improving linkage to needed resources for vulnerable Orange County residents. We will also continue to offer referrals to substance use disorder treatment centers in a non-prescriptive, participant-initiated manner. The standardized checkout form will be iteratively improved to incorporate feedback from participants throughout the funded period. 5. Engage with and compensate SSP participants for their feedback to improve services: As an organization composed of and led by UNC students, we are conscious of our need to incorporate perspectives from individuals with lived experience with substance use into the direction and leadership of our program to better serve our population. In the next fiscal year, we will strive to integrate participant feedback and include the input of community members with lived experience in a more regimented manner. We will develop and implement surveys on the performance of our programs, including any unmet needs, and compensate participants financially for filling out these questionnaires. We will also identify our most engaged participants and create a community advisory board (CAB) so they can share their input on the program with us at quarterly meetings and as needed throughout the funded period. CAB meetings will begin in Fall 2025. 6. Disseminate our program's work and continue building collaborations through educational conferences:To further engage with other agencies in the state, learn about new harm reduction approaches, and increase our awareness of other local resources, we plan to have our program directors and navigator attend conferences in this fiscal year. They will attend the twice-yearly NC Safer Syringe Initiative Learning Collaboratives for education and training on topics such as wound care that will enhance the services our SSP offers. We will also seek to disseminate our program's unique student-led SSP model by presenting at the American Society of Addiction Medicine conference in April 2026, with abstract submission in January 2026. We hope that the presentation will inspire and guide the creation of student-run SSPs at other institutions.