PM - Reduce Access to Opioids for Misuse
Return to Reduce Access to Opioids for Misuse
Potential Measures
As you add potential measures, please include a description, calculations for the measure and possible data sources.
| Measure | Description | Calculations | Data Source |
| Ease of Accessing Opioids Rating (1-10) | How difficult is it to access opioids? This rating is the average from a series of focus groups and surveys done twice a year to rate how easy it is to: 1) get prescriptions (when not really needed), 2) get or steal prescription opioids, 3) buy prescription opioids on the street, 4) buy heroin, or 5) buy synthetic opioids (fentanyl, etc.) |
This would be a weighted (probably weighted equally) average of five ratings on a scale of 1 to 10. The data would be collected twice a year with a diverse group from different populations being asked to provide the rating for each of the categories. Even if the measures are not super-accurate, they would likely show insights such as major changes in the availability of stealing prescription drugs (hopefully resulting from the combination of strategies being implemented.) | Work needs to be done on the best way to get these ratings, but people who have recently started recovery or entered a program like an Angel program or who are part of a harm reduction program would be examples of people who might give reliable information. Their input could be combined with that of law enforcement and healthcare officials or students or others to come up with the rating for each type of opioid. A clearly defined rubric would help improve the accuracy of the data. |
| Change in the Ease of Accessing Opioids | This would be a 7-point scale where 1 is "Much Easier", 4 is "Unchanged" and 7 is "Much Harder" This could be compared to 1 year ago, and 5 years ago. | This could be done in the same poll as the above measure. | Same as above. The key is to get up-to-date information from a mix of people who are involved in various stages of mis-use or addiction. It would be relatively simple to provide a data gathering tool that could be used in a mix of situations where people who responded would be able to provide responses that would be comparable over time. One possibility is to gather data twice a year for 2 months each time. |
