Developing and Testing the Opioid Rapid Response System - This Phase I SBIR will develop and demonstrate the usability/feasibility of the Opioid
Rapid Response System (OSSR) in order to reduce deaths and strain on emergency
response systems from opioid overdoses. Opioid overdoses exact a tremendous cost in
lives and expenditures due to incredible strain on emergency response systems.
Naloxone has been developed to counteract overdoses. However, the nature of these
events requires a rapid response, a situation that challenges emergency responders in
both lightly populated rural areas as well as densely populated urban communities.
PulsePoint has developed an app with the potential to obviate both concerns by linking
responders to events through the 911 system. PulsePoint is already in place in 4,000
communities throughout the U.S. However, the app cannot accomplish these goals
without being used by a large number of citizen responders who are both able to
administer life-saving Naloxone and confident in their ability to do so. This project is
designed to develop innovative and effective techniques for filling this gap. We build off
of the Clark County Pilot Project conducted by members of our team that developed
preliminary recruitment and training protocols for enabling citizen responders to utilize
the PulsePoint App. Using communication theory, a technology-based recruitment
protocol will be built around appeals to individuals (personal identity appeals) and
others (communal appeals). Recruitment messages will be disseminated through
diverse media channels, including social media, posters, radio announcement, and
work-of-mouth. Social Cognitive Theory will be used to develop both online and face-to-
face training to enable users to use the PulsePoint App, safely respond to calls, and
administer Naloxone. An unblinded, two-arm, parallel group cluster-randomized trial
with non-random cluster sampling will be conducted in two Indiana counties to
establish the usability and feasibility of ORRS and its recruitment and training
components. We anticipate recruiting and training 400 citizen responders. Pretest and
posttest surveys will evaluate the training and as well as recruitment exposure through
the various channels. County-level data on the number of events to which participant
responded as well as lives saved also will be used to evaluate the intervention. A quasi-
experimental design will compare the two recruitment strategies and the two training
modalities. Project findings will be used to design and more extensive, two statewide
evaluation studies (Indiana and Washington) that examine outcomes in numbers of
lives saves as well as conducted a cost effectiveness analyses. The project has great
promise for rapid and wide dissemination through the PulsePoint network of
communities and has the potential to develop a model for community responses to
similar public health events (e.g., coronavirus, stroke, heart failure).
