Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Sep 9, 2021
Date Accepted: Jan 11, 2022
Evaluation of an Experimental Web-based Educational Module on Opioid-Related Occupational Safety among Police Officers: Protocol for a Randomized Pragmatic Trial to Minimize Barriers to Overdose Response
ABSTRACT
Background:
As drug-related morbidity and mortality continue to surge, police officers are on the front lines of the North American overdose crisis. Drug law enforcement shapes health risks among people who use drugs (PWUD), while also impacting occupational health and wellness of officers. Effective interventions to align law enforcement practices with public health and occupational safety goals remain under-researched.
Objective:
The Opioids and Police Safety Study (OPS) aims to shift police practices relating to people who use drugs (PWUD). It adapts and evaluates the relative effectiveness of a curriculum that bundles content on public health promotion with occupational risk reduction (ORR) to supplement a web-based overdose response and naloxone training platform (GetNaloxoneNow or GNN). This novel approach has the potential to improve public health and occupational safety practices, including using naloxone to reverse overdoses, referring PWUD to treatment and other supportive services, and avoiding syringe confiscation.
Methods:
This longitudinal study employs a randomized pragmatic trial design. A sample of 300 active-duty police officers from select counties in Pennsylvania, Vermont and New Hampshire with high overdose fatality rates will be randomized (150 each) to either the experimental arm (GNN + OPS) or the control arm (GNN + COVID-19 occupational risk reduction). A pre- and post-training survey will be administered to all 300 officers, after which they will be administered quarterly surveys for 12 months. A sub-sample of police officers will also be followed qualitatively in a simultaneous embedded mixed-methods approach.
Results:
Research ethics approval was obtained from the NYU Institutional Review Board. Findings will be disseminated widely, and the training products will be available nationally once the study is completed.
Conclusions:
The Opioids and Police Safety Study is the first study to longitudinally assess the impact of an opioid-related occupational risk reduction intervention for law enforcement in the U.S. Our randomized pragmatic clinical trial aims to remove barriers to life-saving police engagement with PWUO/PWID by focusing both on the safety of law enforcement and evidence-based and best-practices for working with persons at risk of an opioid overdose. Our simultaneous embedded mixed-methods approach will provide empirical evaluation of the diffusion of naloxone-based response among law enforcement. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov #NCT05008523
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Copyright
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