Commentary: Applying the Community Partners in Care Approach to the Opioid Crisis

Background: Given national concern over rising mortality from opioid use disorders (OUD) and challenges to increasing OUD treatment access, a coalition approach may hold promise to improve access and out­comes for diverse populations. We present considerations of a community-partnered working group on adapting the Community Partners in Care (CPIC) study and coalition approach to OUD.Method: During January 2016 through Jan­uary 2017, academic, provider, consumer and policy stakeholders reviewed options to adapt CPIC’s Resources for Services (RS) for individual program technical assistance and Community Engagement and Planning (CEP) for coalition support to OUD treatments, integrating stakeholder input into design op­tions with estimated sample sizes.Findings: The working group recommend­ed Community Reinforcement and Family Treatment (CRAFT) as a stakeholder-support intervention to facilitate uptake and adher­ence to Medications for Addiction Treat­ment (MAT). Recommended implementa­tion interventions for MAT/CRAFT were expert technical assistance supplemented by organizational readiness, and CEP for coali­tion support with a Learning Collaborative. Power estimation suggests that to compare implementation intervention effects on abstinence would require a somewhat larger enrolled sample and 3-4 times the screening sample as CPIC, and for mortality, at least 5-10 times the enrolled sample as CPIC.Discussion: Stakeholders viewed the CPIC design and interventions as feasible and acceptable as community-wide approaches for addressing the opioid epidemic, but comparing impacts on mortality would require large, multi-site trials. Ethn Dis. 2018;28(Suppl 2):381-388; doi:10.18865/ed.28.S2.381.