Declaring and Planning for the Overdose Epidemic: Predictors of Opioid Overdose Policy Enactment

ABSTRACT Within the last decade, public health epidemics have become more prevalent, prompting US state and government agencies to reassess how they respond to these crisis events. This is especially true for the opioid overdose epidemic, which continues to have a rising death toll despite significant investment from the US government. Utilizing strategies developed within the field of emergency management, state governments are becoming more involved in responding to the overdose epidemic by implementing state response plans and emergency health declarations. However, little is known about the effectiveness of these responses when transferred to a public health context. To fill this gap, this study conducted a legislative scan and plan quality assessment to examine the influence of plans, the quality of plans, and emergency declarations on policy enactment from 2010 to 2020. Using random‐effects Poisson regression models, this study found that the presence of overdose response plans increased the amount of time it took to pass overdose‐related policies, while emergency declarations increased the number of policies enacted the next year. These findings reveal that some strategies taken from the field of emergency management can be translated to a public health context, but careful consideration should be given to the time constraints of these options.