Facilitators, barriers and lessons learnt from the first state-wide naloxone distribution conducted in West Virginia.

Background: Overdose education and naloxone distribution programmes are known to reduce opioid-related deaths. A state-wide naloxone distribution effort of 8250 rescue kits was undertaken by government, community and university partners in West Virginia in 2016-2017. The purpose of this study was to discern the barriers, facilitators and lesson learnt from implementing this endeavour in a rural state with the highest opioid overdose fatality rate in the US.

West Virginia's model of buprenorphine expansion: Preliminary results.

West Virginia (WV) is situated at the epicenter of the opioid epidemic with the highest rates of overdose deaths and some of the lowest rates of access to life saving evidence-based medication assisted treatment (MAT) for patients with opioid use disorder (OUD). WV used a modified hub-and-spoke model to build organizational capacity for facilities to use buprenorphine to treat patients with OUD and to provide ongoing case consultation. The purpose of this study is to 1) describe the group-base model of buprenorphine treatment and the model used to build organizational capacity, 2) to describe the preliminary results of buprenorphine expansion in WV and 3) to report preliminary data describing and comparing the characteristics of the patients served across five hubs.