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Prevention Insights at the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington partnered with REAL Prevention LLC, was recently awarded a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health. The funded project involves recruiting and training citizen responders to respond to emergencies involving the need for CPR or naloxone, especially in rural areas where emergency medical services (EMS) may have longer response times. Citizen responders will be notified of an emergency through the PulsePoint app. As 9-1-1 calls come in, the PulsePoint app gives citizen responders notifications when there is a medical emergency o which they can respond. This strategy was implemented last year in Clark County, Indiana. At least 483 private CPR events have been responded to by citizen responders, and there have been at least five naloxone resuscitations performed by citizen responders in the county. Prevention Insights continues to recruit individuals for training and expand the use of PulsePoint to other areas.
Substance use disorder (SUD) affects more than just the individual who suffers from it; it also affects the person’s family, including any children in the home. Many studies have been conducted to research the effect that a parent’s SUD has on their children. It is noted that schools in particular offer a unique platform for interventions related to this issue, though it seems this is commonly overlooked when creating programs for children.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model to address the social, emotional and physical well-being of children in schools. A few other collaborations between different organizations also provide schools with similar focuses on different aspects of children’s health. This article goes through a few of these different programs, as well as describing the strengths and limitations of each.
The My Mental Health Crisis Plan app was recently released by SAMHSA to allow individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) to create and share psychiatric advance directive (PAD) in case of a mental health crisis. A PAD allows those with SMI to make decisions about their care in situations where they may not be able to, such as what medications they are willing to take or specific professionals they would like to see. The app can direct professionals to alert designated individuals for the user in the event of a mental health crisis. They can also assign someone to make decisions on their behalf. The app walks users through the creation of a PAD with respect to state-specific requirements. The user can then share their PAD with doctors and others on their care team.
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