I will be speaking about how the New Jersey Open Public Records Act (OPRA) can be applied to researching the opiod addiction crisis. Using example requests, I will show how addiction professionals can tap into various types of police records and data to track the extent of the opiod crisis, including overdoses.
After the presentation, Ocean County College addiction studies students are going to implement the concepts discussed in the talk [in order to complete their term project.](/files/ALDC 101 Term Project Assignment.pdf)
The project is going to see students use public records to identify trends in overdose incidents and drug activity in their communities. The students will use the data to write a memo to their local decisionmakers and make three recommendations about how to combat addiction, making citations to the data they obtain.