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HEALing Communities

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Community engagement to address the opioid epidemic

In the face of the opioid overdose crisis, community coalitions play a pivotal role in driving change. Whether you’re starting a new coalition or strengthening an existing one, this page includes a repository of knowledge, tools, and real-world examples to help with the process. Discover how to strengthen partnerships, build trust, and listen to local expertise.

What You’ll Find Here

  • Practice Guide: A comprehensive guide that offers step-by-step insights on establishing and sustaining community coalitions. Dive into practical tools, case studies, and best practices. 
  • Coalition Assessment Tool: Assess how a coalition's membership may influence decision-making and reflect on who is missing from the table.
  • General Principles of Community Engagement: An overview of community engagement, outlining principles and providing strategies for integrating community engagement into substance use prevention efforts.
  • Real-World Insights: Stories and lessons learned from successful coalitions across different regions will help other communities build and strengthen local coalitions. 

Click here to access the Engaging Community Coalitions to Decrease Opioid Overdose Deaths Guide

In 2023, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) published a guide for community members looking to create a new coalition or re-envision an existing coalition to address the opioid crisis. 

The guide includes contributions from research and community partners and emphasizes the importance of community engagement in reducing opioid overdose deaths. It equips readers with practical tools and real-world examples, enabling them to build and strengthen community coalitions committed to this critical cause.

HCS-KY's own Coalition Composition Assessment Tool is included. This tool can assist communities in understanding how a group's makeup can affect decision-making and identifying sectors and populations that should be added.

HCS-KY also strongly encourages engaging people with persons who use drugs (i.e., "living experience") early in the process as they often have unique insight into barriers and facilitators of service access. Harm reduction programs are often well-positioned to facilitate engagement of those who are actively using drugs.

For those working in Kentucky, we further recommend engagement of local health departments, many of which operate harm reduction programs and partnership with the state's existing networks of coalitions. These include but are not limited to the Kentucky ASAP Boards.

Cover of SAMHSA CE practice guide

More community engagement resources

Icon of coalition

Explore

About HCS and the community engagement approach
Learn how community engagement bolstered the adoption of evidence-based practices during HCS
General principles of community engagement
SAMHSA presents community engagement core components, practical considerations, and examples of successful programs
Just the essentials
This 2-pager summarizes SAMHSA's general community engagement guide (linked directly above)
What was the HCS design?
Read about the aims, methods, and framework of HCS

Research reported in this website was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number UM1DA049406. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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