Best Practices for Engaging Communities of Color in Opioid Prevention Programs

Abstract

The United States has an opioid epidemic that requires efforts to help youths and families navigate complex challenges. Extension professionals are being called on to develop programs that equitably and effectively engage and serve audiences across racial and ethnic differences. To accomplish this, Extension professionals must understand the systemic and historic inequities that have shaped prevention and treatment initiatives within communities of color. Establishing culturally responsive practices is essential for building successful prevention programs. This article presents an overview of historical occurrences, challenges faced by communities of color, and recommendations for best practices.

A feasibility study of the community health worker model for garden-based food systems programming

“…VCE partici-pants immediately recognized the importance of food as culture and the potential of food to connect marginalized communities, thus extending previous findings by Cachelin et al (2019) and Eggert et al (2015). Although the work of Gonzalez et al (2021) was focused on opioid prevention programming, many of the same best practices shared for engaging BIPOC communities in Extension programming were expressed by interview participants: understanding the needs within each community, recognizing and examining personal biases, and nurturing meaningful relationships. This overlap in recommendations for inclusive practices suggests that the CHW model and the integration of local knowledge is a good fit for the values of VCE.…”

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“…VCE partici-pants immediately recognized the importance of food as culture and the potential of food to connect marginalized communities, thus extending previous findings by Cachelin et al (2019) and Eggert et al (2015). Although the work of Gonzalez et al (2021) was focused on opioid prevention programming, many of the same best practices shared for engaging BIPOC communities in Extension programming were expressed by interview participants: understanding the needs within each community, recognizing and examining personal biases, and nurturing meaningful relationships. This overlap in recommendations for inclusive practices suggests that the CHW model and the integration of local knowledge is a good fit for the values of VCE.…”

Agents for change: developing transformative and Adaptive Leadership capacities among early-career extension professionals

“…Cooperative Extension is called on to engage and serve all audiences (Ingram, 2013). Thus, Extension Professionals require continued professional development related to diversity, equity, and inclusion focused on building the capacity to: (a) acknowledge inequity and the organizational and societal ways it is perpetuated; (b) remove barriers to participation; and (c) develop culturally responsive, appropriate, and accessible programs while enacting structural changes in the organization to contribute to justice (Fields & Nathaniel, 2015;Fields, 2017;Gonzalez et al, 2021). Such needs can be met by developing the capacity of Extension Professionals to engage in Adaptive Leadership to address complicated challenges for which there is no existing solution and in Transformative Leadership to center justice and equity outcomes in all solutions (Heifetz et al, 2009;Shields, 2010Shields, , 2011Shields, , 2016.…”