Governments across the nation are all struggling with responding to the substance use disorders and overdose deaths that plague their communities.
Although various agencies have increased access to naloxone (a medicine that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose) and provided more education around substance use disorders, drug-involved overdose deaths have steadily increased since 2019.
Another response was the launch of the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP), a web-based tool that displays drug misuse spikes and clusters within and across jurisdictions nationally. The Kansas Overdose Response Strategy (ORS) team values the information ODMAP provides to jurisdictions. Still, the Kansas ORS team, in partnership with the Midwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) and Wichita State University’s Community Engagement Institute (CEI), saw value in taking ODMAP a step further with geographic information system (GIS) technology.
Tags: Opioid Epidemic Programs