Reaching Rural and Urban Communities Impacted by Overdose: A Distributed Drug-Checking Model

Location: A412 GWCC - Drug checking is increasingly being pursued within overdose prevention responses. As new drug-checking projects emerge, new questions also are being raised about which instruments to pursue and how to scale-up these responses so that they have significant reach and impact for both urban and rural communities. This session will present a distributed model of drug checking that addresses multiple barriers to increasing the reach of drug checking as a response to the overdose crisis. A key component of this model is an integrated software platform that links a multi-instrument, multi-site service design with online service options, confirmatory checking, and a foundational database that provides storage and reporting functions. In small and rural communities specifically, the distributed model can eliminate the need for technicians while still providing point-of-care results with local harm reduction engagement and access to confirmatory testing online along with local and regional public health monitoring data. The project is contributing innovations in drug checking technologies and service design that attempt to overcome current financial and technical barriers towards scaling-up services to a more equitable and impactful level and effectively linking multiple urban and rural communities to report concentration levels for substances most linked to overdose.