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Students' participation in relevant service learning can have a unique impact on their institution of higher education, if provided the opportunity. This article explores student-designed sexual misconduct prevention efforts taking place in an undergraduate project management course at one institution of higher education. We found that involving students in particular kinds of campus communication design and implementation simultaneously improved those efforts and offered students the opportunity to participate in impactful civic projects. In our article, we first examine the most common approach to sexual misconduct prevention, while considering its limitations. We then introduce a nontraditional collaboration---technical communication student involvement within prevention work---which resulted in new efforts. Finally, we illustrate how instructors can integrate similar collaborations.

Stigma towards substance use continues to exacerbate the opioid crisis and its detrimental effects, claiming tens of thousands of lives each year. Reducing substance use stigma through evidence-based techniques is crucial to overcoming and eliminating stigma’s imposed barriers. This study, conducted in the USA, employed semi-structured interview transcripts of 32 adults with lived experience of opioid use disorder (OUD), professionals, and family members were analyzed using an inductive thematic approach to identify overarching themes for OUD stigma reduction strategies. Utilizing this lived-experience framework revealed methods to address stigma through interpersonal communication and social interactions. Specifically, using less stigmatizing language, addressing perceptions of persons who experience OUD, employing open communication about OUD to change narratives and beliefs through incorporating messages of hope and recovery, and replacing stigma with empathy and compassion to support recovery. Utilizing individuals with lived experience of OUD offered first-hand insight to identify potential solutions, advance existing literature, and ultimately combat the opioid crisis.

The opioid overdose epidemic continues to disproportionately impact underserved rural areas throughout the nation, with many of these rural areas experiencing greater opioid-related mortality rates than their urban counterparts. With limited treatment infrastructure and resources, two rural communities in Southeast Utah utilized community-based participatory research collaboration principles to develop, implement, and evaluate a series of evidence-based community opioid education events. This practical and quantitative study surveying 123 participants describes the collaborative efforts of two rural communities in addressing the devastating impacts of the opioid overdose epidemic and reflects on the success of the events via descriptive analysis of summary data. These events increased participants’ reported perceptions of and knowledge in four main education areas: stigma reduction, prevention and treatment awareness, naloxone education and use, and resource location awareness. Post-event surveys further supported these results, revealing improved learning in each of these four areas, indicating increased knowledge toward opioid use disorder treatments and stigma reduction. In addition, participants identified key takeaways such as local resource awareness and dismantling stigma as effective strategies to reduce the negative effects of the opioid overdose epidemic. This model for rural community education supports previous research and serves as an effective strategy of public health practice to address the opioid overdose epidemic on a local level.

The release of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in 2016, the growing use of online delivery formats for public health education, and the urgent need to train an expanding global health workforce all reflect the need to adopt best practices in the design and delivery of online global health courses. The purpose of this coaching article is to share peer-to-peer strategies and best practices for developing a global health survey course for online delivery. Important elements for consideration include the use of a backward design approach, global health competency review and selection, the scope and sequencing of key content areas, meaningful assessments of competency mastery, the development of authentic learning strategies, the potential use of open educational resources, and strategies for ongoing course evaluation and refinement. A backward course design, with well-selected content domains and competencies, opens the way for the development of the best possible learning experiences that are consistent with national benchmarks for online course development. The use of this strategy has resulted in a much keener sense of course “ownership” on our part, along with enhanced learning experiences and satisfaction for students.