# "Search and Rescue" peer-to-peer opioids prescriber education campaign

> **NIH FDA U18** · PARTNERSHIP TO END ADDICTION · 2021 · $500,000

## Abstract

FOA Number: RFA-FD-17-008
“Search and Rescue” Peer-to-Peer Opioids Prescriber Education Campaign
Research & Related Other Project Information - Project Abstract
This project will extend the “Search and Rescue” prescriber education campaign developed and
deployed over five years, beginning in 2012, with support from FDA. It will build on learning
derived from two-state, six-state and national rollout phases, and will also incorporate new
elements that will equip patients and their parents / family members to interact constructively
with their providers as medication is being prescribed.
The “Search and Rescue” campaign was created and launched against a backdrop of mounting
overdose deaths attributable to opioids, including prescription opioids. As that trend has
steadily worsened (in part due to migration from prescription opioid abuse to heroin use), we
perceive an urgent need to continue – and to strengthen – our efforts to equip prescribers to
identify at-risk patients in their practices and refer them to treatment as appropriate. The
Centers for Disease Control and the Surgeon General have both, within the past year, stressed
the important role that prescribers must play in addressing today’s opioid addiction epidemic.
As “Search and Rescue” is extended, then, the Partnership will intensify its paid media outreach
behind those channels of communication that have proven to be most effective in the first phase
of the campaign, will further refine and enrich the campaign website at
www.searchandrescueusa.org, will more aggressively enlist partner organizations (e.g., medical
societies) in promoting the campaign, and will expand its earned media (public relations) efforts
in support of the campaign.
Lastly, drawing on the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids’ expertise in reaching parents and
caregivers of teens and young adults, a new campaign component will equip parents to ask
prescribers basic questions at the time that medication is prescribed, helping to ensure that their
child is being appropriately screened and advised – in effect, “demanding” of the prescriber a
level of familiarity with the tools and resources promoted by the “Search and Rescue” campaign.
The effectiveness of this initiative will be measured via a combination of media and website
analytics, and through pre- and post-surveys conducted among visitors to the website –
capturing intended improvement in familiarity with, and knowledge of, the basic tools and
resources featured or linked to on the Search and Rescue site.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10244901
- **Project number:** 5U18FD004593-11
- **Recipient organization:** PARTNERSHIP TO END ADDICTION
- **Principal Investigator:** Frederick John Muench
- **Activity code:** U18 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** FDA
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $500,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2012-09-15 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10244901

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10244901, "Search and Rescue" peer-to-peer opioids prescriber education campaign (5U18FD004593-11). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10244901. Licensed CC0.

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