The HEALing Communities Study launched the Phase 1 meetings in the eight Wave 1 counties, where they are working with their coalitions and beginning the Communities that HEAL intervention. First stop: Cayuga County.
As we've shared, the School of Social Work received an $86 million grant last year from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to spearhead an ambitious multi-year effort to reduce opioid overdose deaths in New York State. The effort, part of a nationwide research study on how to address the opioid crisis, is being led by SIG Director and University Professor Dr. Nabila El-Bassel, and brings together Columbia’s School of Social Work, the Department of Psychiatry, the Mailman School of Public Health, the Data Science Institute, as well as researchers from Albert Einstein School of Medicine/Montefiore Health System, City University of New York, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York University School of Medicine, University of Miami, and Yale School of Medicine.
After completing all of the Phase 0 Community Orientation meetings in all 16 counties, the HEALing Communities Study launched its first Communities That HEAL intervention! County stakeholders gathered to address the overdose epidemic in Cayuga County as part of the HEALing Communities Steering Committee.
The team are also completing baseline data collection, which includes community surveys, interviews and a landscape analysis to identify assets in all 16 communities relevant to the project. To date, there has been an excellent response rate from all counties. Over 3,000 organizations in the 16 counties have been identified as potentially impacting project outcomes.
Read more about the HEALing Communities Study.