Project

HEALing Communities Study-Kentucky

The National Institutes of Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration sponsored the HEALing Communities Study (HCS) to test the impact of implementing a menu of evidence-based practices across healthcare, behavioral health, justice, and other sectors, paired with community engagement and communication campaigns, in reducing opioid overdose deaths. The Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Ohio sites developed a Photovoice protocol providing for comparison across sectors and positionalities in relationship to the opioid epidemic (e.g., professional service providers, people with lived experience, advocates, etc.). This project is innovative in the scale of its engagement of diverse stakeholders and communities to understand one of the most complex public health issues: the opioid epidemic. Dr. McGladrey and Voices of Behavioral Health Lab students facilitated 10 Photovoice groups (n=45 participants) during spring/summer 2022. One of these groups comprised people with lived experience of opioid use disorder who are in recovery and now serve as peer support specialists providing overdose education and linkage to medication for opioid use disorder treatment.