Strategies

Provide information and increase motivation to change or prevent problematic alcohol consumption in a short session; also called alcohol screening & brief intervention

Use specialized courts to offer criminal offenders with drug dependency problems an alternative to adjudication or incarceration

Use specialized courts to work with parents involved in the child welfare system who may lose custody of their children due to substance abuse

Provide medications such as methadone to individuals diagnosed with opioid use disorder in outpatient, residential, and hospital settings, usually with counseling and behavioral therapies; often called MAT

Use regulation to extend nurse practitioners’ (NPs’) scope of practice to provide care to the full scope of their training and skills without physician oversight, especially for primary care

Improve work environments for nurses via establishment of strong nursing leadership, organizational support, etc.

Make clinician, hospital, clinic, long-term care facility, and insurance plan performance on health care quality measures publicly available via report cards, reporting websites, or similar tools

Provide sterile injection equipment and often other treatment and referral services to people who inject drugs; also called needle or syringe exchange programs and needle syringe programs

Shift the way health care organizations approach trauma by adopting universal trauma precautions and providing trauma-specific care