Here is a short recap of our October 23rd webinar. We had a four person panel conversation, here is what each speaker chatted about.
Emily Costello
ORISE Fellow with the Division of Overdose Prevention, where she serves as an Evaluation Officer with the Prevention Program and Evaluation Branch
Emily Costello discussed the recently created evaluation profile for OFR teams. She first gave some background about why the CDC evaluation team began developing evaluation profiles. Because overdose prevention is a relatively new field and resources describing the core components of common prevention activities and available data sources are limited. The profiles were created to aid OD2A evaluators in developing their OD2A evaluation plans and help in the development of future performance measures.
The core components of the OFR evaluation profile were then reviewed, followed by an overview of the logic model component, process component, and outcomes component of the OFR evaluation profile. Finally, the evaluators and SMEs responsible for creating the OFR profile were listed. Most of these contributors were attending this OFR webinar.
Melissa Heinen
Senior Research Associate with the Institute of Intergovernmental Research, where she oversees Overdose Fatality Review Training and Technical Assistance
Melissa discussed the new online OFR toolkit. The online tool is based on the publication, “Overdose Fatality Review. A Practitioner’s Guide to Implementation.” The website includes step-by-step instructions for how to recruit an OFR team, plan and facilitate meetings, collect and store data and build a recommendation plan. Recorded webinars, downloadable sample documents and a link to request OFR-specific training and technical assistance is also available. Visit frequently for new content and resources.
Lisa Bullard-Cawthorne
Program Planning and Partnership Coordinator for drug overdose programs at the Wisconsin Division of Public Health and University of Wisconsin School of Medicine
Lisa talked about OFR teams (18) in Wisconsin and how they use ongoing evaluation to assess and improve the implementation of OFR teams. Quarterly reflection and progress reporting on deliverables accomplished and identification of successes, challenges and lessons learned are used. A survey and semi-structured interviews will be conducted with sites to evaluate the extensive training and technical assistance to all teams.
Recommendations generated and those acted upon by local sites are tracked and a new mechanism will be set up to address those that are state-level though the creation of a state overdose fatality review council, made up of representatives of six state agencies, including Departments of Health Services, Justice, Corrections, Children and Families, along with WI State Laboratory of Hygiene and Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.
Stephanie Rubel
Health scientist with the Public Health and Public Safety Team within CDC’s Division of Overdose Prevention
Stephanie discussed how OFRs fit into the broader OD2A agenda. She stated that one of the goals of OD2A is to leverage relevant and timely data from multiple sectors to gain a comprehensive understanding of the many factors that contribute to the overdose crisis and to prioritize prevention efforts. Whereas population level data can show the extent of a problem and correlations between factors associated with overdose, these data are not as useful in explaining how various factors contribute to or prevent overdose.
As a complement to examining population-level data, OFRs can help illuminate the various pathways that lead to fatal overdoses and identify opportunities to intervene to prevent similar overdose deaths. Used in concert with population-level data, OFRs can help generate hypotheses to further explore using population-level data. And they can support or refute assumptions built on population-level data. In the process of examining individual cases, OFR teams can better understand local needs and gaps, and develop specific recommendations to address them. Finally, Stephanie talked about how data generated by OFR teams can be used to inform both harm reduction strategies and risk reduction strategies.
Leave a Reply