Leveraging local knowledge to contextualize the opioid epidemic within HEALing Communities Study communities: A Photovoice protocol

Abstract

Since its inception 30 years ago, Photovoice has gained increasing popularity as a research method and more recently has been incorporated within randomized controlled trial (RCT) designs. Photovoice is a participatory action research method that pairs photography with focus group discussions to record community strengths and concerns, build critical consciousness, and reach policymakers. Adherence of Photovoice implementation to these original tenets of Photovoice varies. This article provides the Photovoice protocol developed by the authors to improve the methodological rigor of Photovoice integration into RCTs and help contextualize the landscape for the HEALing Communities Study (HCS: NCT04111939), a greater than $350 million investment by the National Institute on Drug Abuse along with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to reduce opioid overdose deaths in 67 of the hardest-hit communities in four states (Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio). The product of a cross-state collaboration, this HCS Photovoice protocol provides ethical and methodological tools for incorporating Photovoice into RCT designs to enhance community engagement, communication campaigns, and data-driven decision-making about evidence-based practice selection and implementation.

Keywords: Opioid crisis; Participatory action research; People with lived experience; Photovoice.

Figure 1:

Photovoice augments the three pillars of the CTH.

Figure 2:

HEALing Communities Study CTH phases (Sprague Martinez et al., 2020; Walsh et al., 2020) and phase-specific activities with purple boxes indicating how Photovoice could complement work in the phase.

Figure 3.

Example of community concerns and strengths related to a potential HCS photo-topic listed by SEM domains