The development of this toolkit is informed by different sources, including learning collaborative members, best practices from research, and stakeholder interviews and survey responses from Riverside County’s school districts.
RUHS-Public Health conducted stakeholder interviews and collected survey responses from Riverside County school districts to inform the development of this toolkit.
Please note that this website is a living document that will continue to be updated based on the differing needs of Riverside County schools, and as research on best practices and data trends evolve for the County. While it is understood that each school district has different needs, this website reflects general information on substance use prevention. This toolkit is not intended to be a comprehensive guidance on substance use prevention, but a starting place to provide initial guidance on substance use prevention strategies. We hope this information will help start conversations and foster collaborative between schools, and other county and community partners. The information listed on this site as well as any recommendations for programming are views, thoughts, and opinions that have been developed from a community collaborative and are for educational purposes only.
Improve capacity of school districts to implement substance use prevention strategies that align with current policies and practices.
Increase knowledge of available data sources for overdoses / substance use and access to existing substance use prevention media campaigns / messaging.
BACKGROUND
Riverside Overdose Data to Action (RODA) was created in 2019 to enhance surveillance of overdose morbidity and mortality to advance local insight into overdose incidence in Riverside County and create more responsive and collaborative prevention efforts to address the upstream causes of substance use disorders and overdose. In 2020, RUHS-Public Health launched an overdose prevention training which includes screening and referrals to resources for students. Over the past three years, Public Health has trained over 4,000 students on overdose prevention and screened over 2,000 students for further linkages to care.
A learning collaborative for schools was created in October 2022 to provide additional support to school districts with their substance use prevention efforts. One of the main outcomes of the collaborative is to develop a toolkit to support school districts. While this toolkit attempts to address varying substance use prevention needs, it is not intended to be an exhaustive toolkit, rather a supplemental tool to help build internal capacity of schools to prevent overdoses.