New Mexico will increase awareness of the dangers of sharing medications and work with medical providers and pharmacies to increase awareness of the risks of overprescribing opioids to youth and young adults. The project will implement prevention strategies that reduce sharing of medications, help parents safeguard and properly dispose of medications, and teach youth, parents and young adults about the dangers of opioid misuse.
The New Mexico Human Services Department, Behavioral Health Services Division, Office of Substance Abuse Prevention (OSAP) will implement the Strategic Prevention Framework for Prescription Drugs (SPF Rx) grant project in Bernalillo County. As the state's largest population center with 32% of its population, 42% of opioid-related overdose emergency department visits and 37% of the state's fatal overdoses occurred in this county which was also the focus of the state's first SPF Rx grant from 2016 to 2021. The Health Equity Council (HEC, formerly the Bernalillo County Community Health Council), will implement a range of evidence-based environmental, educational and information dissemination strategies aimed at reducing risky prescribing practices, increasing the perception of harm involved in taking opioids, decreasing sharing of medications, and increasing safe storage and disposal practices. HEC will focus many of its strategies on high-risk populations and those groups facing health disparities.
The project will serve 101,974 individuals in Bernalillo County over the five-year grant period by meeting objectives that aim to: decrease concurrent opioid and benzodiazepine prescriptions and their concurrent use; decrease high dose opioid prescriptions; reduce youth social access to prescription painkillers by increasing locked storage of prescriptions, increasing safe disposal of prescriptions, and reducing sharing of prescriptions through messaging and information to providers, parents, grandparents, and guardians; increase pharmacy PMP checks and pharmacy patient education about the risks of opioids; and direct culturally appropriate messaging to high-risk subpopulations to reduce painkiller use and increase awareness of the risks of opioid misuse.
The SPF Rx Advisory Council will utilize PMP and epidemiological data to identify other high risk areas of the state where media messages can be employed to reduce risky prescribing and risky use, especially of co-prescribed opioids and benzodiazepines, the most common cause of prescription opioid overdose death. The state-level OSAP project will strengthen partnerships with New Mexico's Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP), a program of the Board of Pharmacy, and the Department of Health, Epidemiology and Response Division.
