Prevention for States

Prescription Drug Overdose: Prevention for States is a program that helps states combat the ongoing prescription drug overdose epidemic. The purpose of Prevention for States is to provide state health departments with resources and support needed to advance interventions for preventing prescription drug overdoses.

Funded States

CDC funds 29 states through the Prevention for States program (see map).

• September 2015: 16 states were funded $14.4 million and began executing and evaluating prevention strategies to improve safe prescribing practices and prevent prescription drug overuse, misuse, abuse, and overdose.
• March 2016: 13 more states were funded for a total of $10.8 million per year.
• September 2016: 14 states were awarded a competitive supplement totaling $11.4 million.
• September 2017: 8 additional states were funded for the competitive supplement for $4.8 million; also 27 of the 29 states were funded with a non-competitive supplement for $19.3 million.

Priority Strategies and Activities

Through 2019, CDC plans to give selected states annual awards between $750,000 and $1 million to advance prevention in four key areas. Awarded states are collaborating with key partners to maximize efforts and address issues that impact prescribing and drug overdoses. Examples of states’ activities include:

Maximizing PDMPs

• Moving toward universal registration and use
• Making PDMPs easier to use and access
• Making PDMP data more timely
• Expanding and improving proactive PDMP reporting to identify and address inappropriate prescribing patterns
• Using PDMP data to better understand the nature of the prescription drug overdose epidemic

Community or Insurer/Health Systems Interventions

• Providing technical assistance to high-burden communities and counties
• Improving opioid prescribing interventions for insurers and health systems
• Enhancing use of evidence-based opioid prescribing guidelines

Policy Evaluations

• Evaluating interventions to better understand what works to prevent prescription drug overdoses

Rapid Response Project

• Implementing a project to advance an innovative prevention approach and respond to new and emerging crises and opportunities

Impact

The Prevention for States program includes evaluation of awarded states’ program activities to monitor performance, demonstrate effectiveness, and capture success stories. Results and project successes will determine the impact of this program and inform future state and national efforts in preventing prescription drug overdoses.