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Funding statement: This publication was made possible by the Overdose Data to Action Grant #NU17CE010224 awarded by the State of Nevada DHHS DPBH Bureau of Behavioral Health, Wellness and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the State of Nevada or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC’s Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) initiative addresses the national overdose epidemic by bridging the gap between data collection and public health response. Nationally, more than 50,000 people have died annually from opioid-involved overdoses for the past decade, a crisis driven by an increasingly lethal drug supply, the prevalence of illicit fentanyl, and complex polysubstance use.
While recent data suggests a promising decline in overdose deaths across most of the United States, Nevada remains a critical outlier, being one of the only states where overdose rates have failed to decrease and, in some regions, have continued to rise.
The Larson Institute is funded to lead comprehensive surveillance and prevention initiatives aimed at reducing overdose mortality across Nevada. Our strategic prevention efforts include developing a feasibility plan for integrating Certified Peer Recovery Support Specialists into emergency departments to provide linkages to care. Additionally, we provide multi-modal training on CDC Clinical Practice Guidelines for healthcare providers and conduct community-based outreach to distribute life-saving harm reduction supplies—including naloxone and testing strips—alongside evidence-based overdose prevention education.
The project is evaluated on an ongoing basis. Metrics include number of doses of naloxone distributed, number of testing strips distributed, number of intervention encounters, and changes in knowledge for trainings.
