This brief from the State Health Access Data Assistance Center examines the United States opioid crisis, analyzing trends in overdose deaths from heroin and other opioids, such as prescription painkillers. Using vital statistics data, it also looks at differences in opioid deaths by age, sex, race/ethnicity and urbanization.

This is a report from the National Interoperability Collaborative (NIC) that provides eleven recommendations targeted at preventing opioid use disorder (OUD) overdose death. Several of these include addressing trauma, cutting down on the supply of prescription and illicit opioids, and treating OUD in the criminal justice system.

Each recommendation is followed by examples already implemented and helpful resources. The overall aim of the report is to encourage communities to move upstream in their response to the opioid crisis. 

This academic paper provides an overview of the evolution of the opioid crisis framed as an epidemic of opioid addiction through overprescribing. Prevention strategies are discussed across three levels: preventing new cases of opioid addiction (primary prevention), identifying early cases of opioid addiction (secondary prevention), and ensuring access to effective addiction treatment (tertiary prevention).

This is a 2015 report compiled by a multidisciplinary team focused on addressing the opioid crisis using three guiding principles: informing action with evidence, intervening comprehensively, and promoting appropriate and safe use of prescription opioids.

This is a comprehensive report that lays out the 56 recommendations made by the commission appointed by the Trump Administration to address the opioid crisis. After giving an overview of the opioid crisis and its wide-ranging impact, recommendations are made in the areas of federal funding, research, opioid addiction and overdose prevention, treatment, and recovery. 

This is a report from the National Safety Council that examines how strong employee policies, alliances with health benefits and workers’ compensation plan providers, education, expanded drug-free workplace testing, and access to treatment programs can proactively address opioid misuse in the workplace. 

This is an academic paper that analyzes stakeholder interviews to explore strategies to sustain time-limited opioid grants and determine barriers and facilitators. Financing and reimbursement, service integration, and workforce capacity were the most cited barriers, and status in state government structure, public support, and spending flexibility were noted as key facilitators. Strong partnerships were highlighted as essential components in strategies.  

This is a report from a convening of experts by the United Hospital Fund that describes in detail the ripple effect of the opioid crisis on families and communities. Recommendations are made to address the intergenerational and community-level impacts of opioid use disorder. Programs targeting these negative impacts are also highlighted in the report. 

Community health centers play an important role in efforts to address the opioid crisis. In many communities, they are on the front lines of this public health emergency and have become an important source of treatment for those with opioid use disorder (OUD). This issue brief presents findings from a 2018 survey of community health centers on health center activities related to the prevention and treatment of OUD.

This is a report from the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House that discusses supply and demand factors that have driven the opioid crisis. Initially driving prescription opioid deaths, prescription opioid prices fell in conjunction with expanded government health care coverage and a rising market share of generic opioids. The second wave of the opioid crisis was largely driven by an expansion in the supply of illicit opioids, reducing their prices, along with medical and public health steps implemented to reduce opioid prescribing, likely leading to an increased demand for illicitly manufactured opioids. 

This publicly-available presentation from the Maine Rural Health Research Center (author John Gale) focuses on prevention, treatment, and recovery strategies that rural communities, particularly rural hospitals, can engage in to address the opioid crisis. Additionally, examples of existing programs for each strategy are discussed in the presentation. 

This Council of Economic Advisors report from 2017 estimates the economic cost of opioid overdose deaths using conventional economic estimates for valuing life routinely used by U.S. Federal agencies. It also adjusts for underreporting of opioids in overdose deaths, includes heroin-related fatalities, and incorporates nonfatal costs of opioid misuse.