Welcome to the final part of our series in which we share findings from year one of Virginia’s State Opioid Response (SOR) Grant. This week, we continue our series with a look at progress related to Virginia's recovery efforts. We also share reflections on how recovery services agencies and Peer Recovery Specialists have responded to the emerging COVID-19 crisis, and how their work has quickly adapted to avoid disruptions in recovery services.

As our daily lives are rapidly changing, leaders are being stretched to new lengths in their effectiveness, approach, and decision making. To be an effective leader, one must be agile during times of crisis and rely on their emotional intelligence to meet the needs of their followers.

Welcome to part three in a four-part series in which we share findings from year one of Virginia’s State Opioid Response (SOR) Grant. This week, we continue our series with a look at progress related to Virginia's treatment efforts. We also share reflections on how treatment practitioners have responded to the emerging COVID-19 crisis, and how their work has quickly adapted to avoid disruptions in treatment services.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are facing unprecedented times characterized by social distancing-- business and school closures, panic shopping, and entire cities on lockdown-- the collective of which has virtually upended every facet of our lives. The enormous cognitive load involved in processing what is happening around us is causing a form of shared trauma that our society hasn’t felt for generations.

Welcome to part two in a four-part series in which we share findings from year one of Virginia’s State Opioid Response (SOR) Grant. This week, we continue our series with a look at progress related to Virginia's prevention efforts. We also share reflections on how prevention practitioners have responded to the emerging COVID-19 crisis, and how their work has quickly adapted to continue to deliver high quality prevention services in the midst of a rapidly changing environment.

As recently as three weeks ago, the opioid epidemic was one of the largest public health crises facing America. With the onset of a global pandemic, public health has been thrust into a new spotlight, and attention has shifted to doing everything in our power to ‘flatten the curve’. Yet for many, addressing the behavioral health needs of ourselves, our families, and our communities remains critically important.

In a four-part series in the coming weeks, we will highlight key findings from one of OMNI’s behavioral health projects—an evaluation of the first year of Virginia’s State Opioid Response (SOR) grant.

As Childhood Abuse Prevention month begins, OMNI aims to bring community awareness to the prevalence and impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). ACEs encompass all types of abuse, neglect, and other potentially traumatic experiences such as violence or instability in the home that occur in childhood (under age 18). Although ACEs are experienced in childhood, they have wide-reaching effects and lasting impacts into adulthood.

In 2016, the City of Boulder launched the Substance Education and Awareness (SEA) Fund to prevent youth substance use by leveraging the city's recreational marijuana tax revenue to fund community agencies (partners) providing direct programming and to disseminate media campaigns.

Epidemiology curves, outbreak maps, and line graphs of the volatile stock market are flashing across the news and my social media feeds at a breakneck pace these days. The constant updates on the COVID-19 pandemic have made me think a lot about the role data and data visualizations are playing in this public health emergency. As an evaluator working in public and behavioral health, I look at data

Measurement-based Care (MBC), also known as routine outcome monitoring, or feedback-informed therapy, has been shown to positively impact client experience and progress in treatment across diagnoses and treatment modalities, as well as benefit individual clinicians and treatment-focused agencies of all sizes

Individuals with serious mental illness, substance use disorders, and medical health issues are overrepresented in jails and prisons (Fazel, Bains, & Doll, 2006; Steadman et al., 2009; Baillargeon et al., 2009), up to four times the rate as in non-incarcerated populations (Prins & Draper, 2009; Torrey et al., 2010; Fazel & Seewald, 2012). Individuals interacting with law enforcement and/or in jail settings while experiencing mental health and/or substance use disorders are at the height of vulnerability (Birmingham, 2003). As a result, the criminal justice setting is tasked with both the protection of society and an opportunity for screening, treating, and connecting individuals to community services upon reentry (National Research Council, 2014).

Both mental health and substance use disorders are diseases that have biological, psychological, social, and spiritual components (Peters, Taylor, Lyketsos, & Chisolm, 2012). Treatments for mental health and substance use disorders encompass a spectrum of programs, therapies, and other strategies, each at varying intensities. A common theme of treatment for these disorders is that they should be delivered with empathy, without confrontation (MHA, 2017), and individuals should be treated with dignity and respect for their personhood (Marcovitz, 2019).

This year, our Quantitative BPT is leading an organization-wide initiative to train our team and deploy R as our primary tool for analysis, reporting, and visualization at OMNI. 

For most young people who enroll in college, it is their first time away from home and away from the support of their established peer groups and family members (Fromme, Corbin, & Kruse, 2008). This adjustment can be overwhelming, as is the added full college course schedule and expectations to perform (Macan, Shahani, Dipboye, & Phillips, 1990). On top of that, individuals at this age are in a stage of development when they are introduced to often difficult realities of adult responsibilities (Arnett, 2000).

Although schools’ primary function is to provide education, they serve as a natural access point for children across diverse subpopulations to receive health services (Richardson & Juszczak, 2008: O’Connell, Boat, & Warner, 2009). School-based interventions have the potential to educate youth about mental health issues and decrease stigma (Essler, Arthur, & Stickley, 2006). This section of the review focuses on guiding best practices for treatment of behavioral health in school-based settings organized across four domains: comprehensive behavioral health systems within schools; prevention; school policies; and personnel.

Mental health and substance use disorders are common, recurrent, and treatable, yet the most effective methods for addressing these issues are not always apparent or implemented. Our expert public health research team recently completed a comprehensive literature review on best practices for treating mental health and substance use disorders as part of a larger set of recommendations

This month, the Futurebound Summit brought together entrepreneurs, funders, policy makers, and other experts to build community and drive innovation with a shared goal of driving systemic and sustained change for child development.

Our team at OMNI engaged in multiple sessions during the week, from the kick-off events to leading a catalyst session focused on “Advancing the Evidence for Innovations in Child Development” alongside our long-term partner the Family Resource Center Association.

On this National Rural Health Day, we celebrate the important work taking place in rural and remote communities and share our continued commitment to improving public health.

Today, we launched a new page on our website, one focused on sharing our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) journey. In this fiscal year, the OMNI Institute is initiating efforts to formally and systematically integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout our organization, and throughout and thereafter, to institutionalize and sustain practices that reflect an understanding of DEI as intrinsic to every aspect of our work - who we are, what we do, and how and why we do it.

As recently reported in The Washington Post, the release of a comprehensive national dataset on opioid prescriptions provides a ‘virtual road map to the epidemic.’ Research shows that as opioid prescriptions increase, so do the number of opioid overdoses, and the data recently made available to the public dramatically illustrates this fact.

 We see the importance of such data every day in our work with states and communities invested in reducing and preventing the misuse of opioids and its devastating consequences for individuals, families, and communities.