Coordinating Comprehensive State Responses
With the ever-changing opioid epidemic, states need effective ways to coordinate their responses. Altarum’s learning management system (LMS) provides robust, easy-to-use tools to plan and manage opioid-related initiatives.
Known as the Comprehensive Opioid Response Effort (CORE), our system applies expertise and decades of experience in virtual learning and substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery to guide all content. Users can participate in online self-directed learning as well as programs with individualized coaching. All content lives within the LMS, accessible from a single portal, ensuring your team a holistic and seamless experience.
CORE is based on a four-dimensional framework that includes components designed to work in concert with one another: (1) Build Capacity; (2) Train; (3) Improve and Assure Quality; and (4) Measure, Analyze, Monitor, and Report. States can further customize the CORE framework across three solution tiers: (1) Off-the-Shelf; (2) Tailored; and (3) Custom.
Opioid Research and Best Practices
States and communities affected by high rates of opioid misuse know that they need to respond, but it can be difficult to know where to start. By conducting environmental scans and cost burden analyses, we help those most affected begin to understand the scope of the problem, where it is most concentrated, and the type of interventions that will be most effective. Our qualitative approaches such as stakeholder interviews and focus groups help lay the foundation for collaboration and capacity building. And our systematic reviews of evidence-based practices help provide a roadmap for opioid use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery.
Our work calculating the cost of the opioid crisis has earned national attention. Read more of our opioid research and best practice guidelines below.
Opioid Training and Technical Assistance
We have decades of experience providing training and technical assistance in substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery.
Opioid Prescribing
Altarum specializes in clinical QI training proven to positively impact patient outcomes while providing accredited education across a wide spectrum of health care providers. Our opioid prescribing program helps improve clinicians’ ability to appropriately identify, prevent, and monitor opioid dependency or misuse among patients, and use enabling technology, such as Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs. We also support training in naloxone administration for law enforcement officers and community organizations.
Learn more about our current opioid prescribing solutions below or contact us to see how we can create a custom education program to meet your needs.
Peer Recovery Supports
Strong social supports, including peers who have personally experienced addiction and recovery, can improve outcomes for those struggling with opioid use disorders. We work closely with organizations at the state and local level to integrate and deliver peer recovery support services across and throughout the criminal justice system, from developing peer training and supervision materials to devising strategies for partnerships to ensure comprehensive recovery supports are available in communities across the state.
Postpartum Opioid Misuse
The 12 months after childbirth are an especially vulnerable period for new moms at risk of opioid dependency. By combining our expertise in recovery services, maternal health, and community health service delivery, we’re helping to overcome the stigma that so often prevents patients from seeking care for substance use disorders—and providers from delivering it. Our holistic approach incorporates a woman’s sexual and reproductive health needs while strengthening clinical capacity through provider training in screening and referrals to improve postpartum care for women.
Contact Us
Jessica McDuff - MA
Program Director, Behavioral Health
Areas of Expertise- Behavioral Health
- Evaluation Methods and Design
- Technical Assistance and Program Improvement
Jessica McDuff has 22 years of experience working with federal, state, and local agencies to evaluate and improve behavioral health programs and systems of care. She specializes in evaluation design and implementation with emphasis on use of equitable evaluation principles and cross sector linkages between behavioral health and primary care, maternal and child health, and family planning. Jessica holds a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Michigan.