Public Health Dashboards in Overdose Prevention: The Rhode Island Approach to Public Health Data Literacy, Partnerships, and Action.

As the field of public health rises to the demands of real-time surveillance and rapid data-sharing needs in a postpandemic world, it is time to examine our approaches to the dissemination and accessibility of such data. Distinct challenges exist when working to develop a shared public health language and narratives based on data. It requires that we assess our understanding of public health data literacy, revisit our approach to communication and engagement, and continuously evaluate our impact and relevance. Key stakeholders and cocreators are critical to this process and include people with lived experience, community organizations, governmental partners, and research institutions. In this viewpoint paper, we offer an instructive approach to the tools we used, assessed, and adapted across 3 unique overdose data dashboard projects in Rhode Island, United States. We are calling this model the "Rhode Island Approach to Public Health Data Literacy, Partnerships, and Action." This approach reflects the iterative lessons learned about the improvement of data dashboards through collaboration and strong partnerships across community members, state agencies, and an academic research team. We will highlight key tools and approaches that are accessible and engaging and allow developers and stakeholders to self-assess their goals for their data dashboards and evaluate engagement with these tools by their desired audiences and users.

Reflections From Rhode Island's Safe Consumption Sites Regulations Committee: A Lesson in Racial Equity.

In July 2021, a statewide measure to create Harm Reduction Centers (also known as safe consumption sites [SCS]) was signed into law in Rhode Island. Convincing evidence shows that SCS can reduce premature death in the surrounding neighborhood. Although SCS have had success around the globe for approaching 40 years, implementing a harm reduction center of this kind in the United States requires consideration of this country's unique racial and geographic politics. In this manuscript, we describe a series of discussions at the Regulations Committee meetings in Rhode Island around the question of whether or not to mandate the presence of inhalation rooms. Through this vignette, we aim to convey how, at the highest level of government, citizens of Rhode Island were able to promote and prioritize racial equity.

Factors associated with opioid-involved overdose among previously incarcerated people in the U.S.: A community engaged narrative review.

BACKGROUND: People with a history of incarceration are at high risk for opioid overdose. A variety of factors contribute to this elevated risk though our understanding of these factors is deficient. Research to identify risk and protective factors for overdose is often conducted using administrative data or researcher-derived surveys and without explicit input from people with lived experience. We aimed to understand the scope of U.S. research on factors associated with opioid overdose among previously incarcerated people. We did this by conducting a narrative review of the literature and convening expert panels of people with lived experience. We then categorized these factors using a social determinants of health framework to help contextualize our findings. METHODS: We first conducted a narrative review of the published literature. A search was performed using PubMed and APA PsycInfo. We then convened two expert panels consisting of people with lived experience and people who work with people who were previously incarcerated. Experts were asked to evaluate the literature derived factors for completeness and add factors that were not identified. Finally, we categorized factors as either intermediary or structural according to the World Health Organization's Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Framework. RESULTS: We identified 13 papers that met our inclusion criteria for the narrative review. Within these 13 papers, we identified 22 relevant factors for their role in the relationship between overdose and people with a history of incarceration, 16 were risk factors and six were protective factors. Five of these were structural factors (three risk and two protective) and 17 were intermediary factors (13 risk and four protective). The expert panels identified 21 additional factors, 10 of which were structural (six risk and four protective) and 11 of which were intermediary (eight risk and three protective). CONCLUSION: This narrative review along with expert panels demonstrates a gap in the published literature regarding factors associated with overdose among people who were previously incarcerated. Additionally, this review highlights a substantial gap with regard to the types of factors that are typically identified. Incorporating voices of people with lived experience is crucial to our understanding of overdose in this at-risk population.