Overdose Fatality Review Team

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What is an Overdose Fatality Review (OFR)?

OFR is a national model that involves in-depth reviews of fatal overdose cases by multi-disciplinary teams to optimize response to the overdose crisis. It's a data-driven process that aims to identify system gaps and generate community-specific strategies for prevention and intervention.

Established December 2023, the Oakland County OFR meets monthly and consists of confidential reviews of individuals overdose cases, as well as community-level data to facilitate identification of missed opportunities for prevention and intervention. A list of recommended actions for preventing future overdose deaths is generated at each meeting for future implementation.

Before: Select case(s) to review, collect data and information from partners. During - Review case and community data, discuss case circumstances and system gaps, identify recommendations. After - Provide recommendations to OFR subcommittees, subcommittees develop action plans.

Goals

The OFR process is driven by the following goals:

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Shared Understanding

  • Enhance understanding of area agencies’ roles and services
  • Increase knowledge of community assets and needs, substance use and overdose trends, existing prevention activities, and system gaps

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Optimized Capacity

  • Expand the community’s overall capacity to prevent future overdose deaths by leveraging resources from multiple agencies and sectors
  • Advance a systems-level approach to the overdose crisis

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Shared Accountability

  • Continuous monitoring of local substance use and overdose death data
  • Oversight of recommended implementation activities
  • Ongoing reinforcement of accountability for action

Objectives

  • To enhance understanding regarding trends of overdose in the local community
  • To identify missed opportunities for prevention and intervention
  • To implement innovative, community-specific overdose prevent strategies

OFR Partners

The Oakland County OFR process brings together a diverse group of partners representing various sectors across the community.

Members of the OFR are unified by the following guiding principles as outlined by the OFR toolkit:

  • A shared goal of reducing overdose deaths
  • Recognition of substance use disorder a chronic treatable disease
  • Understanding that overdose deaths are preventable
  • Use of multisector data to inform response strategies
  • Continuous improvement of the OFR process and prevention activities

Oakland County OFR Partners

OFR Subcommittees

Public Health and Public Safety Subcommittees were established to further advance Public Health and Safety Team (PHAST) framework in the community and continue bridging gaps among sectors. The subcommittees meet monthly and jointly on a quarterly basis to align efforts.

Public Health and Public Safety Subcommittee Goals

  • To facilitate coordinated and data-driven action based on OFR recommendations
  • To ensure that recommendations that emerge from the OFR are implemented into action
  • To develop, oversee and evaluate short-term and long-term action plans for recommendation implementation