Engaging Martinsville: Community Action Helping Tackle the Opioid Epidemic
For years, Southwest Virginia has been heavily impacted by the opioid epidemic. This includes the town of Martinville, Virginia, which has had one of the highest rates of opioid pills prescribed per person in the country.
To address the epidemic in the region, the Center on Society and Health’s Emily Zimmerman and Carlin Rafie from Virginia Tech, (formerly from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center), have engaged the community in an opioid epidemic response group in Martinsville and Henry County, Virginia.
Engaging Martinsville is a two-year participatory action planning project to address the opioid epidemic by involving community partners and stakeholders in the region using the Stakeholder Engagement in Question Development and prioritization method, also known as the SEED Method.
Zimmerman says the SEED Method is about coming up with ideas, knowledge, and solutions at the grassroots level. She added that there is now more funding for research projects addressing the opioid epidemic but not many that work at the community level. The SEED Method develops solutions from the ground-up by involving community stakeholders at all stages and takes into account a community’s distinct challenges and resources.
The Martinsville project includes two phases. In the first phase, the research team worked with community stakeholders to develop community priorities and action plans. The team is currently in the second phase, in which community work groups implement action plans on the high priority strategies. These action plans include establishing a detox center, establishing a drug court, raising public awareness, and creating parent and child education programs.
On March 5, these groups came together with the project’s researchers to share their progress, challenges, and next steps. The teams reported major strides in their efforts. The detox center team is working on policy and program efforts to fund the development of detox services and the drug court team is preparing to have an application to the Supreme Court of Virginia by early September to establish a drug court by 2021. Additionally, the public awareness and education groups are creating campaigns and other action items to achieve their goals.
The two-year project will be completed at the end of September 2020, but stakeholders will be encouraged to carry on their action plans after the end of the project period.
The SEED Method
The project utilizes the SEED Method, a way to engage communities and stakeholders — such as patients, caregivers, advocates, and health professionals — in the process of conceptualizing and prioritizing research questions on health-related topics.
Similar projects have been implemented in Richmond and Martinsville on lung cancer outcomes and dietary compliance for diabetes and hypertension.
To find out more about the SEED Method, visit our project page.