The funding will support her project "Knock and Talk: Public Health-Public Safety Partnerships for Post-Overdose Outreach and Prevention."
Jennifer Carroll, assistant professor of anthropology, has received $61,595 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via Boston Medical Center for her work on the project, "Knock and Talk: Public Health-Public Safety Partnerships for Post-Overdose Outreach and Prevention." (R01-CE003052)
A non-fatal opioid overdose is the strongest predictor of a subsequent fatal overdose. Thus, a non-fatal overdose offers a pivotal opportunity to engage the survivor in harm reduction and/or treatment services to reduce the likelihood of a future fatal overdose. "Knock and Talk" (KT) programs are emerging secondary prevention interventions designed to reduce the risk of a future overdose in survivors. These programs are a collaboration between first responders and public health programs. They provide community-based outreach following a non-fatal overdose and they link survivors to treatment and prevention services.
Carroll’s contribution to the project will include her oversight of the qualitative arm of this mixed-methods investigation. Rich, qualitative, semi-ethnographic data will be collected through interviews with program facilitators and participants as well as in-vivo observations of these outreach efforts at work. This close look at the human-interaction component of the intervention will be used to determine the effectiveness of KT programs in reducing opioid overdoses as well as develop KT program guidelines for public health and public safety agencies implementing and sustaining KT programs with the goal of increasing the positive impact and reducing collateral harms of these increasingly popular interventions.