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The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) Program is the first major federal substance use disorder treatment and recovery legislation in 40 years and the most comprehensive effort to address the opioid epidemic. CARA establishes a comprehensive, coordinated, and balanced strategy through enhanced grant programs that expand prevention and education efforts while also promoting treatment and recovery. The Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Site-based program was developed as part of the CARA legislation signed into law on July 22, 2016. In FY 2017, the Overdose Outreach Projects will provide funding and technical assistance to units of local government, and Indian tribal governments to plan, develop, and implement comprehensive diversion and alternatives to incarceration programs that expand outreach, treatment, and recovery efforts to individuals impacted by the opioid epidemic who come into contact with the justice system. Funding may be used to connect survivors of a non-fatal overdose with treatment providers or a peer recovery coach in an emergency department; provide survivors of non-fatal overdoses, and their friends and family, with access to naloxone and other recovery support services; provide prioritized—ideally immediate—access to detox and treatment services; overdose prevention education and community outreach and engage a research partner to conduct action research providing skills and assistance in identifying performance measures, tracking measures to assist in the improvement of program implementation and fidelity, providing subject matter expertise and guidance.

In Beaver County, Pennsylvania, accidental overdose deaths increased by 240% from 2014 to 2016, and over 600 Naloxone reversals were reported in 2016. Beaver County is also the first county in the region to report an overdose death from carfentanil, an analog of the synthetic opioid analgesic fentanyl, 10,000 times more potent than morphine. In response, Beaver County will implement a program to analyze the underlying causes of opioid misuse and to create a data exchange system for use by the Criminal Justice Advisory Board, the Sequential Intercept Model Committee and the Drug Coalition to influence policy. Additional goals include evaluating outreach, prevention, and treatment efforts and to work to expand prescription drug monitoring. Townsend Associates LLC will serve as the project’s research partner.

CA/NCF