Participatory Action Planning to Address the Opioid Crisis in a Rural Virginia Community using the SEED Method

Community-based participatory research is an approach to creating research in partnership between communities and researchers (see Israel, Eng, Schulz, & Parker, 2012; Wallerstein, Duran, Oetzel, & Minkler, 2018). An integral part of the process is action to address community-identified needs. Our team implemented the SEED Method in a rural Virginia community to address an issue of great concern to the community: high rates of opioid misuse and overdoses. The opioid crisis was already a focus of concern in the community, and there were ongoing efforts to address it. Community stakeholders, who knew about a previous project completed by our community-based participatory research (CBPR) team using the SEED Method, asked if we could start a project on the opioid issue in their community. Our previous work using this method focused on developing and prioritizing research questions, but we knew that community members wanted to develop strategies and potential solutions. Here we describe an adaptation of the SEED Method that occurs in two parts. Part I focuses on working with diverse community stakeholders to develop and prioritize potential strategies for addressing the health problem. Part II brings together stakeholders to develop and implement community action plans based on those strategies. The process resulted in a list of potential strategies developed by stakeholder participants. In two subsequent community action planning meetings, stakeholders selected four of these strategies and formed four work groups for the action phase of planning and implementation.