• AI/AN people living on reservations and in urban areas are experiencing the second highest fatality rate from opioid overdose with 13.9 deaths per 100,000 people.
• Issues of racial misclassification are on-going challenges to accurate reporting.
• Many localized efforts are often carried out in coordination with federal partners, including SAMHSA, NIDA, CDC, and IHS. Information about these partnerships, however, is not easily available.
• Comprehensive efforts to address the opioid epidemic in AI/AN communities rely on strong partnerships between tribal governments and local, state, and federal entities.
• Additional community-based surveillance, treatment, and prevention efforts to respond to the epidemic across diverse tribal and urban AI/AN communities is critically needed.
• TECs, IHS clinics, I.T. departments of various institutions, and tribal health departments and organizations conduct surveillance specific to opioid-related outcomes and focus on public health impacts – but that information is not readily available.
• Data dashboards and other tools and technologies could provide accessible platforms to disseminate strategies and promising practices being implemented to address opioid misuse across AI/AN communities.​