Background: Post-overdose outreach programs have emerged to reduce overdose mortality, especially through focusing on overdose survivors. This study surveyed police and fire departments in Massachusetts by telephone from December 2015 to 2016 to identify collaborations with public health organizations to conduct post-overdose outreach. The goal was to describe these partnerships and categorize the different kinds of programs.

Results: Police and fire personnel from 110 municipalities responded (31% of municipalities). Of those, 23 reported implementing programs  that were collaborative, community based and had a well described process to connect survivors and their networks with support and/or treatment services

Authors identified four types of programs: (1) Multi-Disciplinary Team Visit, (2) Police Visit with Referrals, (3) Clinician Outreach, and (4) Location-Based Outreach.

Summary: This was one of the first studies to identify and describe different approaches to post-overdose outreach. Authors called for further work to identify programs and highlighted the need to evaluate the effectiveness of post-overdose outreach programs.