The Strategic Opioid Advanced Response Team (SOAR) team is a multidisciplinary task force that works to further the prevention of substance misuse in Onslow County. SOAR is dedicated to improving the opioid response in the community through a collaborative effort among local government, community stakeholders, and concerned citizens. The team works on initiatives to raise awareness, provide education, and investigate solutions to address the issue of drug misuse within the community.

This task force is dedicated to improving the opioid response in Onslow County through a collaborative effort among local government, community stakeholders, and concerned citizens. 

SOAR works collaboratively with community partners to provide awareness of prevention, treatment of, and recovery from Substance Use Disorders (SUDs), while also advocating for equitable and readily-available resources for all Onslow County residents. 

SOAR recently engaged in the Opioid Response Project (ORP), a two-year learning collaborative designed to support ten North Carolina community teams addressing the opioid epidemic in their local communities. The specific goals of this project were to: (1) plan, deliver, and continuously refine activities in support of local community teams responding to the opioid crisis, (2) strengthen the capacity of local community teams for planning, implementing, monitoring, and sustaining their community programming, (3) strengthen collaboration and connections around the opioid response efforts, and (4) disseminate resources and findings to a larger set of stakeholders.

ORP was grounded in the Collective Impact Model (CIM), with community teams participating in a systematic approach that included a series of forums, webinars, and meetings, as well as access to resources and technical assistance. In addition, the community teams completed planning and implementation worksheets to facilitate progress towards their local efforts. The ORP was led by University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Government (SOG) faculty and coordinated by the ncIMPACT Initiative. A report of the ORP findings on the process, outcome, and formative evaluations were synthesized to reflect learnings at both the ORP and community-team levels. The evaluation approach was guided by a logic model, evaluation questions of interest to the ORP stakeholders, and a data collection plan. Sources of data included project documents, surveys, and interviews. The report also included a list of recommendations going forward.