Overdose Response Centering Inequity and Diversity (ORCID) Study

Background

Overdose rates in King County, WA rose dramatically in 2023 with a slight decrease in 2024. Emergency Medical System providers (EMS) are among the first to arrive at the scene of an overdose and are critical partners in care for people who use drugs. The study team partnered with people who use drugs, EMS leadership, and community partners to collect pilot data and then co-design EMS-delivered interventions tailored to reduce stigma and increase access to care for people who use drugs. These interventions are being rolled out as the EMS Overdose Prevention Project (EMS-OPP) and includes training for all EMS providers on:

stigma reduction and trauma-informed care
an EMS naloxone leave-behind program
EMS distribution of fentanyl test strips
warm hand-off to a follow-up team for linkages to care

King County EMS team plan to have 90% of teams participating by 2026.

Study Aims

Utilizing a variety of community-engaged methods and rooted in Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP), the goal of the ORCID Study is to evaluate the EMS-OPP initiative. Specifically, we will partner with people who drugs and Public Health – Seattle & King County to:

evaluate the effect of EMS- OPP on racial disparities in individual experiences (Aim 1);
further evaluate EMS-OPP from the perspectives of Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and American Indian/Alaska Native non-fatal overdose survivors (Aim 2);
examine the impact of the EMS-OPP on racial disparities in population-level outcomes (Aim 3)

Current Study Phase: Year 3 of 5

What’s happening in ORCID’s third year? Right now, we’re continuing community data collection, evaluating first responder data, attending community events, and launching into data analysis.