News & Updates — FORE Announcements

FORE today announced it is awarding $2.4 million to eight organizations that offer training, technical assistance, and other resources aimed at improving outcomes for populations at high risk of opioid poisoning and overdose.
Three of the grantees —the American College of Emergency Physicians, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Opportunity Labs Foundation—are helping to ensure that prevention and treatment services are tailored to adolescents, who are at heightened risk of overdose due to accidental or intentional exposure to fentanyl.

• The American College of Emergency Physicians will help 20 emergency departments (EDs) implement protocols for identifying adolescents who may exposed to fentanyl and other opioids and administering life-savings medications including naloxone and buprenorphine.
• Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital will conduct a national survey of U.S. adolescents to better understand how they describe current patterns of drug use. The findings will be used to update clinical assessment tools, screening guidelines, and prevention strategies.
• The Opportunity Labs Foundation will develop a platform that enables health and education leaders to compare state-level policies and regulations related to overdose prevention and response in schools. It will also conduct a national survey of school superintendents and staff to gauge their knowledge of the overdose crisis and existing overdose prevention policies.

Two other grantees, the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs and the Friends Research Institute, are helping to disseminate evidence-based practices for supporting people with perinatal substance use disorders (SUDs).

• The Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs will create a national resource hub to scale evidence-based perinatal SUD treatment practices. It will also offer training and technical assistance to provider organizations interested in replicating effective program models.
• The Friends Research Institute will expand its Doing Right by Birth program, which educates health care professionals about the legal, scientific, and ethical dimensions of reporting pregnant people with opioid use disorder (OUD) to child welfare agencies.

Three other grantees — the Health and Reentry Project, the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, and the Public Health Institute —are helping to build capacity for delivering evidence-based practices in jails, prisons, mental health clinics, and EDs.

• The Health and Reentry Project will develop a toolkit to guide state Medicaid agencies as they implement new policies for covering OUD services in carceral settings.
• The National Council for Mental Wellbeing will develop a toolkit and training curricula to support Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) in integrating peer recovery support and services in their operations. The council plans to pilot the toolkit in 30 CCBHCs.
• The Public Health Institute will continue to improve access to medications for OUD in EDs nationwide through the Bridge program, building on previous funding from FORE.

“Through training, toolkits, and research, our grantees are building capacity to deliver evidence-based practices where they are needed most to save lives,” says Karen A. Scott, MD, MPH, FORE’s president.