Data-driven Response to Prescription Drug Misuse in Kentucky

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 Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center (KIPRC), an agent for the Kentucky Department for Public Health (DP) intends to implement a project that will strengthen the inter-agency as well as researcher-practitioner collaborations, expand data-sharing, and improve decision-making of regulatory and law enforcement agencies and public health officials in their efforts to reduce prescription drug misuse and diversion as well as illicit drug use. The goals of the project are to evaluate the impact of Kentucky law SB32, develop and provide education for prescribers and dispensers on the content of conviction data with KASPER, evaluate changes in gabapentin prescribing and diversion, analyze existing and new data sets for identification of drug abuse, and hold quarterly action team meetings to review recent data. The project's research component will be performed by action researchers from KIPRC, the Institute for Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy (IPOP), and the Center on Drug and Alcohol Research (COAR), University of Kentucky. CA/NCF