About Ohio Deflection Association (ODA)
Community Outreach Team Timeline
How community paramedicine became the Community Outreach Team model, and how that model became a statewide association.
A Community Outreach Team is an integrated first response and community paramedicine unit comprised of law enforcement officers, rescue personnel, health care professionals, and substance use counselors.
A Community Outreach Team is trained to serve as a first response unit for substance use, opioid use, and alcohol use disorder-related medical emergencies and, after that, to approach and counsel overdose survivors and their families during the 48–72 hours following a life-threatening overdose — the window when survivors are thought to be most open to accepting help.
February 28, 2017 · by Jac Kern
Attacking the overdose epidemic with community paramedicine and Quick Response Teams
From 9 a.m. to noon on Thursday, March 16, at the Colerain Township Administration Office (4200 Springdale Road), major players in Ohio policy, police, fire, and emergency services convened to discuss this burgeoning technique of combating opioid addiction — how it was already being used, and how to spread the model across Hamilton County, the state, the region, and beyond.
Community paramedicine is an emerging health care practice that provides follow-up and preventative services to those in need. This usually includes people in rural areas and frequent 911 callers, often uninsured people with chronic conditions and barriers to regular medical care. Home visits by community paramedics are shown to help prevent repeated and non-emergency 911 calls and ER visits.
In 2015, Colerain Township took the community paramedicine model and applied it to the heroin and opioid overdose epidemic, sending a team of police officers, firefighters/EMTs, and addiction service professionals to the homes of overdose survivors. Called a Quick Response Team, these trios identified people in the community who had recently been revived with naloxone, made home visits within one week of the overdose, provided assistance to individuals and their families, and worked to link them to services.
Between the program’s start in July 2015 and September 2016, more than 250 follow-ups were made to overdose patients, with 79 percent of those patients in recovery and an overall drop in overdoses. Colerain’s Community Outreach Team inspired similar efforts in the Cincinnati-area communities of Norwood and Green Township, as well as elsewhere in Ohio.
Colerain Public Safety Director Daniel Meloy and Colerain Assistant Fire Chief and UC Fire Science adjunct professor Will Mueller hosted a seminar on how the community paramedicine model can be applied successfully to narcotic overdose patients, with presentations by state and local officials and key individuals in fire, emergency medical services, and criminal justice from across Ohio.
Following those presentations, UC Fire Science and Emergency Management program chair Lawrence Bennett hosted a panel discussion on how Hamilton County could implement a countywide Community Outreach Team. The panel included Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Neil, Cincinnati Fire Chief Richard Braun, a community outreach specialist for the Ohio Attorney General, representatives from area treatment services, and people in recovery.
The open-to-the-public seminar was one highlight of the week-long, three-credit community paramedicine course presented annually by UC Fire Science, focused on a new application of the home visit model: helping people with opioid use disorder get treatment and stay in recovery. UC colleges presenting at the course included the College of Engineering & Applied Science (Fire Science), College of Medicine, College of Allied Health Sciences (Social Work), College of Nursing, College of Education, Criminal Justice & Human Services (Criminal Justice), UC Blue Ash (Nursing), and UC Clermont (Social Work).