Overdose Fatality Review Teams as Community Catalyst

Overdose fatality review (OFR) teams represent multisector community stakeholders coming together to address substance use challenges in their communities. The heart of the work that these teams do is the development of recommendations—for the agencies, the community, the region, and the state. What if we conceptualize the work of the OFR as community systems development? What can happen when the team itself becomes the subject of recommendations (e.g., we recommend that this team help move our local system through the stages of the community readiness model)? If we start to track and show the outcomes of that—how individual agencies made process/policy changes or the new connections or collaborations made across team members’ agencies—those can be leveraged to set the foundation for continued, and more complex, efforts. This presentation discusses the case study of the LaPorte, Indiana, OFR team and how its work and collaboration contributed to the county being awarded a “community catalyst” grant to develop and implement a crisis intervention team (CIT). This effort will involve the participation of every law enforcement jurisdiction in the county and training for officers on utilizing the community system to provide appropriate responses and resources in crisis incidents such as overdose, suicide, or domestic violence. Patterns and recommendations identified by the OFR team can inform planning stage processes and training decisions. The OFR team will then have the unique ability to evaluate practical outcomes of CIT responses in future case reviews to provide a direct feedback loop for continuous improvement recommendations.