Purpose:With opioid overdose deaths on the rise in rural Minnesota and across the nation, the call for community-based grassroots efforts is stronger than ever. Recognizing that substance use prevention and recovery programming rely upon community resources, collaborative teams planned and implemented a series of nine community forums focused on opioid and heroin use across rural northeast Minnesota to educate and unite invested community members on the critical public health issue. This article examines the outcomes of the forums and the ingredients of a successful forum.Methods:Surveys were distributed at seven rural community forums to assess measures of growth in knowledge and awareness, as well as demographic characteristics of respondents.Findings:Forums planned by university faculty and community members were effective in increasing overall awareness and knowledge of the opioid crisis within each community. Forums that were rated more highly by attendees included speakers from varied professional backgrounds and integrated cultural strengths. Communities that planned forums together have reported increased collaboration to prevent and address substance use and increased community member engagement on local grassroots coalitions since the time of the forum.Conclusions:Community forums have functioned as an effective grassroots approach to engaging rural community members in opioid use prevention and intervention efforts.

BackgroundAs the burden from the opioid epidemic continues to increase in the state of Minnesota and across the nation, the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy seeks to design an innovative, comprehensive harm reduction curriculum in order to better train student pharmacists to serve the varied needs of the greater community. This study examines incoming individuals’ baseline knowledge of and attitudes toward harm reduction in order to better inform curriculum planning and to ultimately produce pharmacists capable of impacting the devastating effects of the opioid crisis.MethodsIncoming first-year pharmacy students took a survey focused on their knowledge of opioid overdose and the drug naloxone and also provided written reflections on their perceptions of harm reduction. Data was coded using consensual qualitative research (CQR) into appropriate domains.ResultsPharmacy students beginning their professional education revealed a lack of knowledge of proper response to an overdose situation, with 18.56% unfamiliar with the opioid antagonist drug naloxone. Close to 10% (9.58%) of students expressed unwillingness to do anything other than call an ambulance during an overdose event, while 8.98% were either unsure or felt that they would not feel compelled to do something to help. Qualitative coding revealed many barriers to students’ becoming capable harm reductionists, including lack of knowledge of substance use, addiction, and harm reduction, in addition to the presence of bias and stigma.ConclusionIn order to interrupt the cycle of misinformation and stigma within the larger community and the subgroup of medical providers, gaps in student knowledge must be addressed in meaningful, specific ways over the course of their pharmacy education. Evaluating baseline knowledge and beliefs informs the design of a flexible, action-oriented curriculum to produce well-trained pharmacists ready to engage in finding solutions to the opioid crisis.

Substance use and associated fatalities are disproportionately experienced by rural communities. This study used consensual qualitative research methodology to analyze focus group data from individuals in short- and long-term recovery in rural Michigan and Minnesota. Coding was conducted within a recovery capital framework to improve understanding of the resources and barriers participants experienced in their recovery. Key findings included barriers related to transportation, as well as access to and availability of sober meetings and sober living activities. Participants perceived connections to culturally appropriate treatment as particularly important. A reconstruction of social networks from those promoting addiction to those supporting recovery was also prominently emphasized. Recovery capital appears to be a useful framework for assessing how rural communities are experiencing substance use crises, in addition to identifying areas of low capital and high need in supporting long-term recovery.

Background: As opioid overdose deaths climb, legislation supporting pharmacists in developing their role to address the crisis has expanded. Although Minnesota pharmacists are encouraged to utilize opiate antagonist, syringe access and authorized collector legislation, the use patterns of these tools are unknown. Methods: A mixed-methods approach was used to survey 8405 Minnesota-licensed pharmacists on their practices related to the opioid crisis. An analysis of community pharmacist utilization of opioid-related legislation was conducted. Results: The majority (88.64%) of respondents indicated that they had not dispensed naloxone in the past month using a protocol; 59.69% reported that they had not dispensed naloxone by any method in the past month. Over sixty percent (60.61%) of respondents agreed they are comfortable with dispensing syringes and would dispense noninsulin syringes in their pharmacy under the statewide Syringe Access Initiative; 25.86% reported that they are not comfortable dispensing syringes. The majority (78.64%) of respondents reported that they do not participate in collecting unwanted pharmaceuticals. Conclusion: While pharmacists have the potential to play a key role in efforts focused on addressing the opioid crisis through harm reduction strategies, this role and the use of supporting legislation is currently underutilized in the state of Minnesota.

Introduction Although the opioid crisis has been acknowledged as a public health emergency that requires collaboration and engagement from pharmacists, the perceptions of pharmacists on their role in harm reduction strategies and their views on opioid use have not been well established. Objectives The primary objective of this study was to understand Minnesota pharmacists' attitudes about the profession's role in the opioid crisis, including perceptions on the pharmacist's public health and clinical roles within the crisis, views on the dispensing of naloxone, and attitudes toward harm reduction strategies including syringe access. Methods This was a mixed‐method study that utilized an anonymous email survey containing Likert‐type responses which were quantitatively analyzed, as well as open comment boxes evaluated using Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) methods. Pharmacists with a Minnesota license from all practice settings were invited to participate in the survey. Results While the majority of participating pharmacists acknowledged a need within their communities to address the opioid epidemic agreeing that the profession should have a role in the community response, including provision of patient education and naloxone distribution, a small number of pharmacists believed that either the epidemic was not pertinent to their practice or pharmacy as a profession should not be involved. Concerns regarding naloxone included lack of support from other health professionals, time constraints in practice, and safety and liability concerns with naloxone. Conclusion Considerable opportunity for increased pharmacist education on both opioid use disorder and the role of the pharmacist in harm reduction initiatives exists. Pharmacists from a wide variety of clinical practice settings have appreciable potential to influence the opioid crisis by embracing their clinical and public health roles.