Including Community Partners in the Development and Adaptation of Intervention Strategies to Prevent Initiation or Escalation of Opioid Misuse.

Current literature lacks clear examples of how to engage with communities in the development of opioid misuse interventions for diverse populations and across various settings. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative (HEAL) Prevention Cooperative (HPC) research projects work collaboratively with communities to develop and adapt their opioid misuse interventions to increase both feasibility and sustainability. Ten HPC projects were selected to receive NIH funding and are required to have partnerships with communities where their intervention is being conducted. This paper applies the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-adapted Public Participation Framework to examine the levels of community engagement used by each of these 10 HPC projects (Clinical and Translational Science Awards Consortium Community Engagement Key Function Committee Task Force on the Principles of Community Engagement, 2015). Using this framework, this paper illustrates the range of community engagement approaches and levels that the HPC projects rely on to develop, adapt, and adopt opioid prevention interventions across diverse populations and settings. This paper also lays a foundation for future examinations of the role of community engagement in intervention implementation and effectiveness and the level of community engagement that is necessary to improve intervention effectiveness.

Culturally Responsive Opioid and Other Drug Prevention for American Indian/Alaska Native People: a Comparison of Reservation- and Urban-Based Approaches.

There are few substance use treatment and prevention programs for AI/AN people that integrate culturally based practices with evidence-based treatment and prevention. The National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Prevention Cooperative supports two projects focused on AI/AN populations. One focuses on youth ages 15 to 20 years living within the Cherokee Nation reservation, a multicultural rural area in northeastern Oklahoma, and the second focuses on emerging adults ages 18 to 25 years living in diverse urban areas. We provide a brief overview of the two prevention trials and a case comparison across approaches using the framework of promising practices for intervention science with Indigenous communities (Whitesell et al., 2020) related to (1) integration of Indigenous and academic perspectives to respond to community needs, (2) community partnership and engagement, (3) alignment with Indigenous cultural values and practices, (4) capacity building and empowerment, (5) implementation within complex cultural contexts, and (6) tribal oversight. Overall, these two projects highlight the importance of long-standing relationships with community partners, engaging the community at all levels to ensure that programming is culturally and developmentally appropriate, and having tribal and elder oversight. These practices are key to establishing trust and building confidence in research in these communities and ensuring that research can benefit AI/AN people. These studies showcase how strong partnerships can advance health and support the conduct of rigorous science to help pinpoint optimal health solutions by identifying efficacious, culturally grounded intervention strategies. Although the sovereign status of tribes demands this type of partnership, this research serves as a model for all community research that has a goal of improving health.

Study protocol for a cluster randomized trial of a school, family, and community intervention for preventing drug misuse among older adolescents in the Cherokee Nation.

BACKGROUND: The national opioid crisis has disproportionately burdened rural White populations and American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations. Therefore, Cherokee Nation and Emory University public health scientists have designed an opioid prevention trial to be conducted in rural communities in the Cherokee Nation (northeast Oklahoma) with AI and other (mostly White) adolescents and young adults. Our goal is to implement and evaluate a theory-based, integrated multi-level community intervention designed to prevent the onset and escalation of opioid and other drug misuse. Two distinct intervention approaches-community organizing, as implemented in our established Communities Mobilizing for Change and Action (CMCA) intervention protocol, and universal school-based brief intervention and referral, as implemented in our established Connect intervention protocol-will be integrated with skill-based training for adults to strengthen social support for youth and also with strategic media. Furthermore, we will test systems for sustained implementation within existing organizational structures of the Cherokee Nation and local schools and communities. This study protocol describes the cluster randomized trial, designed to measure implementation and evaluate the effectiveness on primary and secondary outcomes. METHODS: Using a cluster randomized controlled design and constrained randomization, this trial will allocate 20 high schools and surrounding communities to either an intervention or delayed-intervention comparison condition. With a proposed sample of 20 high schools, all enrolled 10th grade students in fall 2021 (ages 15 to 17) will be eligible for participation. During the trial, we will (1) implement interventions through the Cherokee Nation and measure implementation processes and fidelity, (2) measure opioid and other drug use and secondary outcomes every 6 months among a cohort of high school students followed over 3 years through their transition out of high school, (3) test via a cluster randomized trial the effect of the integrated CMCA-Connect intervention, and (4) analyze implementation costs. Primary outcomes include the number of days during the past 30 days of (1) any alcohol use, (2) heavy alcohol use (defined as having at least four, among young women, or five, among young men, standard alcoholic drinks within a couple of hours), (3) any marijuana use, and (4) prescription opioid misuse (defined as "without a doctor's prescription or differently than how a doctor or medical provider told you to use it"). DISCUSSION: This trial will expand upon previous research advancing the scientific evidence regarding prevention of opioid and other drug misuse during the critical developmental period of late adolescent transition to young adulthood among a sample of American Indian and other youth living within the Cherokee Nation reservation. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04839978 . Registered on April 9, 2021. Version 4, January 26, 2022.