Session: Social Work Perspectives on Understanding and Intervening in the Opioid Crisis: Micro and Macro Approaches (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

Opioid addiction is a major public health crisis in the US. The incidence of opioid overdose has quadrupled in the past 15 years. Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the US and most drug overdose deaths involve opioids such as heroin. The crisis is deep and widespread and impacts vulnerable populations such as pregnant women, those experiencing chronic pain, and emerging adults across wide urban, suburban and rural swatches of the US.

With the growing public awareness of this crisis, medically-oriented strategies focused on increasing access to medications such as buprenorphine (to replace opioids) or Naltrexone (to medically reverse potentially lethal effects of overdose) have taken hold. Major federal investments in these strategies are evident through recent and continuing nationwide Federal funding efforts by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Stemming the crisis, however, will necessitate social work contributions to innovative approaches to service delivery, clinical intervention, and public policy.

This symposium convenes four studies focused on opioid addiction, each with unique perspectives that enhance our understanding of social work's role in intervention. To develop long-term intervention solutions to the rapidly increasing overdose problem, we need a better understanding of risk factors associated with opioid overdose – something that has rarely been studied. Accordingly, an analysis of data from opioid users enrolled in an intervention study provides unique insights into the role of mental health symptoms in opioid overdose; Fendrich's findings underscore the role that social workers can play in reducing the risk of repeated overdose by creating linkages to essential behavioral health services. Priddy and colleagues from Garland's lab studied the adjunctive role of social work-based mindfulness interventions for treating opioid misuse in chronic pain patients; the paper shows that mindfulness interventions can decrease craving and enhance the capacity for positive everyday experience. Cochran and colleagues investigated a unique patient navigation intervention targeted to pregnant women with opioid addiction receiving buprenorphine maintenance therapy; their pilot study showed that patient navigation was a feasible strategy for promoting service engagement among pregnant women resulting in reduction of illicit opioid use and depressive symptoms. From a macro perspective, Orellana and colleagues discuss a community intervention targeted toward preventing opioid overdoses through more effective community and pharmacist involvement and through policy and regulatory transformation.

These four papers further our understanding of the opioid crisis and potential micro and macro avenues for intervention and research. The symposium highlights linkages between addiction and other adverse symptoms requiring treatment, such as pain and depression. It provides attendees with useful and rare descriptive information about opioid overdose risk. The papers suggest promising intervention strategies developed from social work practice at the individual and community level. This symposium suggests solutions and strategies for addressing the opioid crisis that go well beyond conventional and well-accepted medical and pharmacological approaches.