UC Nursing faculty implements plan to fight opioid, meth problems in region

A three-year, $1 million grant is being used to implement evidence-based practices and develop potential models for communities to use in the fight against the opioid epidemic by Jennifer Lanzillotta of the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing. Lanzillotta is implementing the grant in one of the areas hit hardest by the opioid crisis, Highland County, Ohio.

The grant comes via the Rural Communities Opioid Response Program, a multiyear initiative supported by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration to address barriers to access in rural communities related to substance use disorder, including opioid use disorder (OUD). With this funding, UC’s Lanzillotta helped launch the Highland County Collaborative Opioid Response Implementation Project (or CORE) in the fall of 2019. She says the project’s goal is to build an infrastructure to transform OUD in an at-risk medically underserved community.

“Through the CORE planning grant we identified several gaps in the community in prevention, recovery and treatment services,” Lanzillotta says. “We are trying to address those gaps by bringing entities together in partnership and coordinating care; leveraging state, federal and local resources; increasing access to care for those suffering from OUD and decreasing fatalities through naloxone distribution.”

Lanzillotta works as a certified registered nurse anesthesiologist at Highland District Hospital (HDH) in Hillsboro, Ohio, about 60 miles east of Cincinnati. People living in this area are predominantly of Appalachian descent, a population that has seen a steady increase in substance abuse for the past two decades and continues to experience higher rates of OUD and overdose deaths than non-Appalachian areas. Highland County is ranked No. 196 on the list of the top 220 counties nationwide identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as being at risk for HIV and hepatitis C infections due to injection drug use. The hepatitis C infection rate in the county increased more than 100% from 2010 to 2015, and continues to rise each year.

CORE features three members in addition to the UC College of Nursing: the Highland County Health Department, REACH for Tomorrow and HDH, with each group having individual leaders on their project team. Lanzillotta says they meet on a regular basis and each representative goes back to their specific organization and implements the plans that are made.

Lanzillotta was recruited to work at HDH by Meghan Johnson, a clinical faculty member in UC’s nurse anesthesia program and who is a recipient of the 2020 Florence Nightingale Award for Excellence in Nursing, presented by the UC College of Nursing. Other UC researchers assisting Lanzillotta in this project include Joe Perazzo, Angela Clark and Tasha Turner-Bicknell.

The research is just one prime example of the university’s commitment to urban impact, one of the pillars of UC’s strategic direction, Next Lives Here.