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Novel Practices that show potential to achieve desirable public health outcomes in a specific real-life setting and are in the process of generating evidence of effectiveness or may not yet be tested.
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Summary Report/Recommendations
This resources summarizes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on substance use and the experiences of people who used drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Highlights include: the pandemic increased the risk of overdose for people who use drugs, and in response people who use drugs reported using more harm reduction strategies. The pandemic also motivated change in wanting to quit drug use for study participants, but also highlighted the social determinants of health as barriers to sustainable recovery.
Emerging Practices that show potential to achieve desirable public health outcomes in a specific real-life setting and produce early results that are consistent with the objectives of the activities and thus indicate effectiveness.
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Peer Review Study
This article describes partnership and community capacity building efforts and examines community impact, defined as successful linkages to resources and changes in stress tolerance capacity among community members. Community capacity building was conceptualized as dissemination of trauma-informed education and training, community outreach and engagement, and linkage of community members to resources. Findings include: training opportunities were widespread, resource linkage type shifted from basic services and health care to food distribution, and significant improvements occurred in coping through emotional and instrumental support (did not report stress tolerance). This demonstrated the effectiveness of community-based partnerships as capacity building strategies, as partnerships had already laid the groundwork and established trust within their communities, resulting in a nimble, local response to a global crisis. The partnerships’ response to the pandemic shows how organizations that are part of a network are able to leverage resources, new ideas, and knowledge to respond to community needs.