In 2024, members of the Social Action Lab toured rural areas in Appalachia to hear from nonprofit groups and others who help people with opioid use disorder move toward recovery.
(Image: Courtesy of the Social Action Lab)
In partnership with a network of leaders from state health agencies, county health departments, and local nonprofits in these areas, Albarracín, her research team and local community members have spent five years preparing—and a year testing—an intervention to promote HIV and HCV prevention, increase well-being, and reduce the stigma of substance use in these areas.
“When we first conceived of the research project, it began with the idea of creating a massive community advisory board to be connected with communities that were all affected by the substance abuse disorder epidemic,” says Albarracín, the Amy Gutmann Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor. “That particular pattern of substance use was causing outbreaks of HIV in areas that had never seen anything like it. In 2015, an Indiana town went from fewer than five infections of HIV a year to around 190 a year. In these areas, the opioid crisis has been compounded by a lack of access to healthcare as well as social stigma, resulting in major health risks.”
Albarracín and her colleagues worked with a team of leaders called the Grid for the Reduction of Vulnerability (GROV) board to help craft a social intervention to address the substance use disorder crisis and increase community well-being in the rural Midwest and Appalachia. The intervention lasted from February 2024 to December 2024. Throughout the year, groups of participants from regions represented by GROV met online over Zoom to craft individual social and health goals. Participants included both people who use substances and the community at large.
The goal was to foster connections between individuals and communities of people near and far. “Social connections can foster the right context for behavioral change, and help pave the way for better community health,” said Devlin O’Keefe, former research coordinator with the Social Action Lab. But social connections alone are not sufficient, so the intervention relies on setting and implementing goals with support from others, says co-investigator Man-pui Sally Chan, research associate professor at ASC. “By fostering social connections with intergroup discussions on health, participants seem to be more willing to share their health needs (regardless of their substance use status), better able relate to one another, and able to become more supportive within their networks,” she says.
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