Summary: Frontline staff and directors from agencies across New Jersey share successful tactics for treating opioid addiction and reducing overdose deaths in their counties.
By: Beth Hurley
CAI’s Trauma Informed Overdose Data to Action (TI OD2A) is an innovative project that helps agencies in New Jersey reduce overdose rates—and support their staff—by integrating trauma-informed practices into their organization.
The New Jersey Department of Health has supported TI OD2A since 2020 because they recognize that overdose and trauma are deeply connected, with 96.5 percent of individuals with substance use disorders having experienced some form of childhood trauma.
In the last three years, CAI has provided training and technical assistance to more than 1,250 harm reduction center staff, emergency medical services personnel, community health workers, and overdose fatality review team members across New Jersey through TI OD2A.
As part of our work, we’ve hosted three daylong convenings for agency administrators and direct-service staff. At each conference, we dedicate time to networking and visioning sessions, because training participants consistently tell us that some of the most effective, actionable education is gained when learning from peers. What we’ve heard at these convenings inspire and inform the ongoing work of the TI OD2A project.
14 promising practices in overdose prevention shared by peers
- Place methadone clinics and treatment centers in areas served by public transit
- Have non-law-enforcement response to overdose calls, like the Newark Community Street Team’s Overdose Response Team that partners with University Hospital to provide a community-led response to overdose emergency calls.
- Increase access to naloxone through mail-order Naloxone distribution and free Naloxone availability at pharmacies.
- Strengthen EMS response to overdose by providing immediate connections to buprenorphine , as Cooper University Health Care has done.
- Investing in community outreach efforts to reduce stigma and encourage people to get help [example we could link to of this or anything else?]
- Building harm-reduction messaging [into what—where—how?] (something about harm reduction expansion in the state)
- Train EMS providers about vicarious trauma and trauma-informed care, as the TI OD2A project is doing at sites throughout New Jersey.
- Train all EMTs in the “Five Minutes to Help” program, developed by Rutgers University and Seton Hall.
- Collaborate with law enforcement to refer people to treatment and other resources through initiatives like Operation Helping Hand.
- Reduce stigma through public education efforts, such as the NJ Department of Health Harm Reduction Centers social media campaign.
- Share data with state and local municipalities using the same measurements so that we are all speaking the same language and information is centralized and actionable, such as through the NJ Department of Health Overdose Data Dashboard.
- Improve access to evidence-based and behavioral health treatment and mental health screening.
- Reach people where they are—provide more safe injection sites and mobile harm reduction services.
- Pursue policy reform—including drug decriminalization.
Learn more about how to reduce the prevalence of overdose and increase the efficacy of services your organization provides to people who have experienced trauma in our e-learning webinar series, Best Practices in Overdose Prevention.
Beth Hurley
New Jersey Trauma-Informed Care Director
Beth Hurley has extensive and diverse experience providing training and technical assistance in the areas of patient-centered primary care, TB, and HIV (domestic and global). She is the director of CAI’s Trauma Informed Overdose Data to Action (TI OD2A) and New Jersey HIV Trauma-Informed Care .