The Opioid drug crisis in US increases at an alarming rate with 68% of the more than 70,200 drug overdose deaths in 2017 involved an opioid, averaging 130 Americans dying every day from opioid overdose (CDC, 2013). Remarkably, between 1999 and 2010, overdose deaths from prescription painkillers increased more than 400% among women, astonishing 1.7 times higher than that of men; and heroin use among women between 2002 and 2013 increased 100%, 2 times higher than among men (CDC, 2013). There is a call for gender-focused drug abuse interventions (OWH, 2016; NIH, 2018). Adverse social conditions, including economic insecurity, have been identified as risk factors for opioid use among women and reasons for relapse. Addressing addiction problems in conjunction with vocational rehabilitation and, specifically, entrepreneurial skills training has been suggested (SAMHSA, 2000). Furthermore, a good behavioral strategy should include community involvement, as it helps to maintain successful addictive behavioral change (NDCI, 2014). Unfortunately, only a handful of recovery centers offer entrepreneurial skills training and help women to engage in volunteer work or offer them employment opportunities, due to the lack of financial and human resources (SAHMSA, 2000). ?The objective of this Phase I grant application is to establish technical and commercial feasibility of Gooddler AI-powered, online social entrepreneurship training platform that aims to provide recovery centers with a cost-effective option that will address entrepreneurial skills training and match women with open job or volunteer opportunities at local non-profit organizations.? To accomplish this objective, we plan to execute the following specific aims: 1) demonstrate commercial feasibility of Gooddler social entrepreneurship training curriculum with three recovery centers in San Francisco Bay Area; and 2) demonstrate the technical feasibility of Gooddler platform to match women in recovery with appropriate volunteering and/job opportunities at local non-profit organizations. We will establish the technical feasibility by developing community-opportunities matching model that will address the specifications of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The commercial feasibility will be demonstrated by helping women to gain skills and knowledge for meaningful engagement (job, volunteering, entrepreneurship). Success will move us closer to our long-term goal of providing drug recovery centers with a tool to help 430,000 women, entering US drug treatment programs every year, to get on the path of productive social involvement in communities of their choice.
Public Health Relevance Statement: Gooddler, Inc. proposes to develop and validate an AI-powered social entrepreneurship training and community-opportunities matching platform, targeting 430,000 women in US enrolled in drug treatment programs annually, to give them the necessary knowledge and skills to ensure a productive social involvement in chosen communities after they complete the treatment. Our highly experienced team will be able to successfully execute the project in this $100M market and expand the offering to other settings. It can be easily adapted to be included in programs for incarcerated women, extended to be offered to men and/or to be offered as a stand-alone vocational skills training course.
Project Terms: Accident and Emergency department; addiction; Address; Aftercare; American; Analgesics; Applications Grants; Area; Artificial Intelligence; base; Behavioral; Budgets; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.); Communities; community involvement; cost effective; Data; design; Drug abuse; Drug Rehabilitation Centers; Drug usage; Economics; Educational Curriculum; Effectiveness; Employment Opportunities; Enrollment; Ensure; Entrepreneurship; Evaluation; experience; Feedback; Gender; Goals; Grant; heroin use; Human Resources; Imprisonment; International; Intervention; Knowledge; Label; Lead; Learning; men; Modeling; Nonprofit Organizations; Occupations; Opioid; opioid overdose; opioid use; Outcome; Overdose; overdose death; Pharmaceutical Preparations; Pharmacotherapy; Phase; Policies; programs; Recovery; Relapse; Research; research and development; Research Subjects; Risk Factors; San Francisco; skills; skills training; Small Business Innovation Research Grant; social; Social Conditions; social engagement; success; Surveys; Time; tool; Training; treatment center; treatment program; United States National Institutes of Health; United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; Vocational rehabilitation; volunteer; Weight; Woman; Work
