Vermont Overdose and Suicide Prevention Funding

Overdose prevention funding - Vermont

There were 106,699 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2021 (32.4 deaths per 100,000 standard population), a 16% increase from 2020.1

*average award amount

Examples of how Vermont is working to prevent overdose

Online recovery training efforts

With support from Vermont's Overdose Response Strategy Team, the Supportive Outreach Project established a recovery team. The team, comprised of social workers, police liaisons, and trained recovery coaches, developed an online system to receive referrals from various agencies, including first responders, when someone experiences an overdose. The team follows up with those individuals to offer linkage to treatment, harm reduction services, ongoing coaching, housing assistance, and other social services.

First responder partnerships help distribute prevention resources

Vermont's Leave Behind Kit program allows first responders to give naloxone and overdose prevention materials and resources to someone at risk of an overdose. All of Vermont's approximately 180 emergency medical services agencies are part of the program, and the first law enforcement partner to join was the statewide Vermont State Police barracks. Interest from local law enforcement agencies may further expand the distribution of overdose prevention resources.

Complementary campaigns address substance use and overdose prevention

Vermont's statewide multi-channel substance use and overdose prevention campaigns produced over 4.6 million clicks, views, and engagements in 2022. The campaigns include KnowOD, with information on how to recognize and respond to an overdose; One More Conversation, to raise awareness and provide resources about substance use during pregnancy; and CDC's RxAwareness campaign addressing stigma and recovery through testimonials of people whose lives were impacted by prescription opioids.

Suicide prevention funding - Vermont

Vermont's suicide prevention priorities

Vermont is preventing suicide with CDC Injury Center funding by:A

• Strengthening access and delivery of suicide care
• Creating protective environments
• Promoting connectedness
• Identifying and supporting people at risk
• Lessening harms and reducing future risk
• Supporting near real-time surveillance

Some groups have higher suicide rates than others. To address disparities, Vermont is focusing on:

• People ages 15-64 living in rural areas, with the subpopulations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ), people with disabilities, and men.

Examples of how Vermont is working to prevent suicide

Addressing data quality issues

Vermont's ED-SNSRO team engaged with hospital partners to address data quality issues to improve data sharing and knowledge around increased trends in suicidal ideation and suicidal behaviors. Vermont worked to improve the reporting of ICD-10-CM codes (administrative billing codes used for public health surveillance and healthcare reimbursement). Vermont also connected with emergency department (ED) staff from hospitals throughout the state to present hospital-specific factsheets, which included data trends by month, and demographics of suicide-related ED visits.

Publishing a data brief

The Vermont Department of Health published a data brief (Trends in ED visits for Suicidal Ideation and Self-Directed Violence, 2017-2019) sharing monthly trends in suicide-related visits by several demographics, including sex, age group, and race and ethnicity, over a three-year period. The data brief looks at seasonal trends in the rate of visits by month. They disseminated the brief to over 40 partners via email.