The Bridge Center and Oregon Public Health Institute Win NNPHI Outstanding Collaboration Award
The Bridge Center and Oregon Public Health Institute (OPHI) are proud to have been named recipients of the National Network of Public Health Institutes (NNPHI) Outstanding Collaboration Award — a new 2026 honor recognizing groups of NNPHI members who have pooled resources and expertise to drive meaningful impact in community health.
The award showcases the groundbreaking progress Bridge and OPHI have made in bringing buprenorphine (bup), a medication used to treat opioid use disorder (OUD), to people in the moments they need it most, before they even reach a hospital door.
The Challenge
In 2024, opioid overdose deaths decreased in Oregon for the first time since 2016. While this marks meaningful progress, the state continues to face a major public health crisis, with more than 1,400 overdose deaths each year. Sustaining and accelerating this progress requires strengthening the systems that can reach people at the most critical moments.
One of the most powerful – and underutilized – opportunities lies within emergency medical services (EMS). EMS providers are often the first, and sometimes only, point of contact between a person experiencing an overdose and the broader health system, especially in rural communities. Yet too often, that moment does not translate into ongoing care. Patients discharged from the emergency department (ED) after a non-fatal overdose face a 5.5% one-year mortality rate, and those who decline EMS transport are at even greater risk.
This gap highlights critical challenges: how do we relieve pain – and overdose risk? How do we turn moments of crisis into sustained pathways to care?
EMS-initiated bup enables paramedics to treat opioid withdrawal in the field, reduce immediate overdose risk, and begin linking patients to follow-up care.
That’s the foundation of the Bridge model: transforming a 911 call into the first step in a continuum of care. When paramedics can initiate bup and connect patients to providers to treat OUD – alongside substance use navigators who guide next steps – the system begins to close one of its most dangerous gaps.
What Bridge and OPHI Built Together
Bridge and OPHI co-developed an EMS Buprenorphine Roadmap, a guide for implementing EMS-initiated bup, with funding support from the Oregon Health Authority. Bridge brought deep expertise in adapting bup models across the country, while OPHI brought the local partners, relationships, and understanding of Oregon’s behavioral and public health landscape that made real implementation possible.
Key to the roadmap was a curriculum for healthcare professionals that could be adapted to pre-existing systems. The curriculum highlighted topics including common misconceptions about addiction and treatment, how EMS is well suited to address gaps, the pharmacokinetics of bup, and how to administer bup in emergency settings. The curriculum was developed in a train-the-trainer format – the first of its kind in addiction medicine modeled after best practices from local partners – so that each person trained could go on to teach others. The collaboration achieved seven total training sessions, reaching 186 healthcare professionals, including ED and EMS staff, from both rural and urban communities around the state.
“When EMS and public health systems work together, we have a much greater opportunity for successful interventions and saving lives,” said Dre Cantwell-Frank, NRP, National Clinical Implementation Manager and EMS Specialist at Bridge. “Systems like these can often operate in silos, but effective relationships are critical — when done right, we can consider both urgent health and long-term health, together.”
Since implementation of the EMS-initiated bup curriculum, impressive results have already been observed:
- EMS agencies report immediate practice changes: increased identification of opioid withdrawal, enhanced patient education, and stronger advocacy for medications for OUD upon ED arrival.
- Pilot participants in Marion and Multnomah Counties are actively building systems to ensure patients receive continuous care after transport — directly reducing treatment drop-offs at the critical EMS-to-ED handoff.
- The train-the-trainer model ensures that knowledge doesn’t stop at the room where training occurred; it travels with every participant back into their agencies and communities.
This collaboration continues to expand access to EMS-based bup across Oregon through continued partnership with Oregon EMS agencies and health systems.
Bridge and OPHI accepted the award at the NNPHI conference in New Orleans on April 29. In addition to the recognition, Bridge is proud of what the Outstanding Collaboration Award represents: two organizations that built something together that neither could have built alone.