Giving Compass' Take:

• The Bridging Access to Benefits and Care pilot program in the Bronx revealed lessons for successfully improving access to care for low-income drug users.

• How can programs in different communities most effectively share learnings? What are the needs of low-income drug users in your community? 

• Read about the role of philanthropy in addressing the opioid crisis. 

In New York City, deaths related to unintentional drug overdoses rose continuously between 2010 and 2017, before declining slightly from 2017 to 2018. However, rates of overdose deaths continued to increase in the Bronx, which lost more residents to drug overdoses in 2018 than any other New York City borough. Overdose deaths among Bronx residents increased by more than 200 percent between 2010 and 2018, and a majority of those deaths involved heroin or fentanyl, which are types of opioids.

Bridging Access to Benefits and Care (BABC) — an innovative collaboration among three nonprofit organizations that serve low-income and vulnerable communities — was designed to improve connections to public benefits and health care services for people dependent on opioids and intravenous drugs in the Bronx. The pilot program sought to address challenges related to social determinants of health for low-income drug users — challenges such as housing instability, food insecurity, and lack of health coverage — by helping them make use of benefits and services. The primary goals of the BABC pilot program were to:

  • Engage high-risk, high-need intravenous drug users and other opioid-dependent users through compassionate, community-based outreach in the Bronx
  • Increase their awareness of and enrollment in public benefits
  • Improve their access to and use of health care

While MDRC’s evaluation of the BABC pilot program is modest in its scope, the implementation findings offer a few lessons that may be helpful for community-based organizations that serve people affected by substance use disorders and that seek to partner with other organizations to expand their offerings.

  • Meeting people “where they are” is an important strategy to engage people who use drugs and other disenfranchised populations who may benefit from increased access to benefits and health care.
  • Technology can help practitioners engage their clients in the community, but to use new technology, organizations must build additional capabilities.
  • Improving access to benefits for vulnerable groups may require intensive, continuing engagement to help people navigate enrollment requirements and processes.
  • Building strong partnerships among multiple organizations to establish a continuum of care requires leadership and training to get everyone to pursue common goals.