Community Assessment - Opioid Crisis, High Risk Pregnancies and Access to Information

The opioid crisis has been well documented. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, there were 188 births with documented Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome NAS in Dallas County to babies covered by Medicaid. This is 13% of the NAS Medicaid claims for Texas in 2015. There were also 160 opioid-related deaths in 2015 which is 13.6% of the opioid-related deaths in Dallas County. However, Dallas County accounts for 9% of the Texas population. The Center for Addiction and Recovery Studies CARS operates the New Connections Pregnant Postpartum Intervention PPI Program which has an emphasis on intervening with high risk pregnancies, especially with pregnant 92 using 103. One way we reach pregnant 92 using 103 is through conducting street outreach, which is giving opioid overdose information, harm reduction kits, hygiene items, pregnancy testing kits and our information out to 92 in high risk areas of Dallas. However, these efforts have not yielded as high of results as needed. This proposal is to pay for students to assist with a detailed community assessment of targeted areas of Dallas County to determine opioid use, access to services, access to healthcare information, and unmet needs. The community assessment will also include a survey of healthcare services in the identified communities and survey their knowledge of interventions with opioid use disorders and their use on NLM information. This grant is to pay for a Graduate Research Assistant GRA to collect data and survey the identified communities with the help of a bachelor's level student. Then the GRA will continue into the Fall semester to help analyze the data, write a report and fill in any gaps in information.