Early Findings From a Tri-county Collaborative Approach to Addressing the Opioid Crisis

While the opioid crisis has captured the concern of public health officials and the public, the epidemic is not evenly distributed. Rural communities are especially hard-hit, particularly areas with a large working-class population where dim economic prospects have led to dramatic increases in so-called “deaths of despair” (Case and Deaton, 2017). These communities bear a high share of opioid-related mortality, and also suffer from limited supports to treat addiction and related problems such as mental illness and chronic pain