Arkansas Opioid Abuse Program: Data-driven Responses to Prescription Drug Misuse

The Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) is being incorporated into the FY 2017 Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Site-based Program. The purpose of this program is to improve collaboration and strategic decision-making of regulatory and law enforcement agencies and public health officials to address prescription drug and opioid misuse, save lives, and reduce crime. This is made possible through the collection and analysis of controlled substance prescription data and other scheduled chemical products through a centralized database administered by an authorized state agency. 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 Data-driven Responses to Opioid Abuse category of funding available through the PDMP grant program will provide funding and technical assistance to state agencies and units of local government located in states with existing and operational prescription drug monitoring programs and federally recognized Indian tribal governments. Funding must be used to form a multidisciplinary action group that may include (but is not limited to): the district attorney’s office, the state or local health department, state medical and pharmacy boards, police and sheriff departments, probation and parole, drug court representatives, child welfare representatives, local drug treatment providers, and community organizations. Grant funds may also be used to support a combination of the allowable use categories to develop multi-disciplinary projects that leverage key data sets; examine the impact of various policies and procedures on patient and community-level outcomes, and implement proven practices on a larger scale; identify geographic areas or populations at greatest risk for prescription drug and opioid misuse and overdose deaths and create data-driven responses at the local or state level; determine best practices for sharing data across diverse stakeholders; implement other innovative activities that demonstrate a multi-disciplinary, data-driven approach to addressing the opioid epidemic and assess the impact of specific policy or practice changes on PDMP utilization and/or patient or community-level outcomes.

The Arkansas Department of Health seeks to convene an action group, the Prescription Drug Overdose (PDO) Advisory council, to encourage and support cross-system planning and collaboration to reduce the incidence of morbidity and mortality related to opioid overdose. The approach will include: integrating PDMP data with all identified datasets, developing composite tables that combine indicators across data sources, providing training and education to opioid prescribers, assessing the impact of specific policy changes to the PDMP, and creating the Opioid Misuse Action Group to provide feedback on the datasets. The Arkansas Department of Health will also implement the Dose of Reality educational campaign to combat opioid abuse. CA/NCF