Requests for Proposals: PHIC Improving Communication about the Drug Supply to Improve Health Outcomes among PWUD

These funding opportunities are supported by the CDC National Center for Injury Prevention through Strengthening Public Health Systems and Services through National Partnerships to Improve and Protect the Nation’s Health, CDC-RFA-PW-24-00800101SUPP24: Improving Communication about the Drug Supply to Improve Health Outcomes among PWUD. 

In collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Overdose Prevention (DoP) within the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), NASTAD will work with project contractors to improve the quality of and access to high-quality community drug checking information, drug-related morbidity and mortality data, and related harm reduction recommendations through the provision of tailored TA and through strategic coordination, product creation, and workforce development with public health and harm reduction stakeholders, namely people who use drugs. To more effectively respond to documented overdose-related health disparities, project activities and products will center the health needs and communications preferences of Black and American Indian/Alaska Native people who use drugs.  

This project, Improving Communication about the Drug Supply to Improve Health Outcomes among PWUD, aims to increase the access of people who use drugs to practical and actionable information on the drug supply by:  

• Improving the quality of community drug checking through TA with Remedy Alliance/FTP and the UNC Street Drug Analysis Lab;  
• Documenting what people who use drugs want and need to know about changes in the drug supply to reduce health and safety risks associated with drug use; and  
• Ensuring that critical health and safety information about the illicit drug supply is communicated meaningfully and in a timely fashion to people who use drugs, in particular Black and American Indian/Alaska Native people who use drugs.  

Goals for this project are to: 

• Ensure states, localities and communities conducting or thinking about conducting drug checking have expertise and resources to effectively implement and support high quality, evidence-based, equitable and accessible drug checking programs;  
• Understand perspectives of people who use drugs, and in particular Black and American Indian/Alaska Native people who use drugs, on what information about the drug supply and related health and safety risks is desired and how health departments should and should not disseminate this information; and  
• Through qualitative data collection with a multi-disciplinary group of experts, identify promising practices in how health departments and federal agencies communicate information about dangerous adulterants in the drug supply and related health risks to people who use drugs—information which may come from, for example, emergency department reporting, overdose spike alerts, community-based drug checking program data, and other sources.