Janine Heron and researchers from the University of Kansass Center for Public Partnerships and Research presented a statewide needs assessment and action-focused tools to the Sunflower board, including county profiles, a vulnerability index, and an interactive ArcGIS mapping tool intended to help local leaders develop targeted strategies.

Janine Heron, project lead, described the process: a 31-member project team, eight-member accountability cohort with lived experience, outreach to more than 2,000 Kansans across 105 counties, and eleven community visioning sessions. The CPPR team emphasized a ‘‘bias for action’’ and said the assessment was intended to support both short-term life-saving interventions and long-term sustainable systems change.

CPPR highlighted several headline findings: the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) indicates nearly 1 in 5 Kansas adults (about 395,000 people) meet DSM-5 criteria for a substance use disorder, with nearly 95% of those individuals not recognizing the need for or not reporting that they need treatment; 2023 CDC data shows 615 drug overdose deaths in Kansas. CPPR said medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) and medical detox are sparsely available and that fewer than 5% of people who need MOUD were receiving it in the state.

CPPR researchers recommended six priority areas: 1) develop structured relationships that foster community-driven health and well-being; 2) reduce stigma and expand public knowledge; 3) prioritize prevention of drug use and overdoses; 4) expand consistent statewide access to high-quality SUD services (including MOUD); 5) normalize continuous care models to sustain progress beyond initial treatment; and 6) ensure long-term programmatic and financial sustainability. They urged a suite approach (layered, multiyear strategies) that blends short-term pilots and longer-term investments.

Specific strategies discussed included expanding MOUD initiation (including use of emergency departments and mobile units), better engaging nurse practitioners and pharmacists (citing models in New Mexico and Idaho for pharmacy-based approaches), strengthening co-responder models that pair behavioral health staff with first responders, and improving cross-sector data coordination (citing South Carolinas data warehouse as an example). CPPR said a presence of nurse practitioners in a community correlated with a 15% lower rate of suspected overdose incidents in their analysis and emphasized linking MOUD to behavioral health and wraparound services.

CPPR unveiled county-level vulnerability profiles and a substance use risk-and-resilience index built from roughly 70 quantitative data points. CPPR said they used lasso analysis to narrow predictors to the most predictive variables (the team reported 17 key predictive measures in county profiles) and recommended that Sunflower and local leaders use the profiles to prioritize investments and convene cross-county collaboratives.

The presentation included an interactive ArcGIS map that layers overdose indicators, EMS response, workforce and treatment access. CPPR said much of the claims and pharmacy data are licensed via IQVIA and that public release of IQVIA-backed interactive layers requires a brief vendor approval; CPPR said they expected vendor sign-off within days to a week and that county profiles (the static PDFs) would be posted sooner.

Board members asked technical and methodological questions about data sources (NSDUH, CDC, IQVIA claims data), limitations (NSDUH undercounts incarcerated and unhoused populations), update cadence for the county profiles and the feasibility of an ongoing dashboard. CPPR recommended Sunflower consider multiyear funding for sustainable programs while retaining a portion for small innovative pilots. CPPR offered to support the board in drafting RFP parameters that require cross-sector collaboration, standardized measures, and data-sharing commitments.