SCC-PG: Securing Underserved Communities from Drug Abuse with Drone-Based Smart Medication Delivery

SCC-PG：通过基于无人机的智能药物输送，确保服务不足的社区免受药物滥用

• 批准号: 2231710
• 负责人: Zhenbo Wang
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: University of Tennessee Knoxville
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-04-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2231710&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SCC; PG; Securing; Underserved; Communities

Despite considerable efforts in combating substance use and exploring novel treatment and recovery strategies, current practices have not been able to connect many patients from underserved low-income communities in rural areas with available healthcare resources due to infrastructure challenges, inaccessibility to pharmacies, patient’s inability to drive, and lack of transportation. Responding to such issues involves interactions among diverse community stakeholders, including healthcare providers, research institutes, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and community residents. However, these stakeholders are typically isolated or inefficiently organized, which leads to unbalanced community coordination and inefficient decision-making in substance use responses. To address these challenges and gaps, this Smart and Connected Communities Panning Grant (SCC-PG) will go beyond the current practices to promote substance use disorder treatment by connecting multiple community stakeholders via innovative community-based coordination mechanisms and connecting the residents from rural areas with urban medical resources via novel mobility technologies. Situated at the heart of Appalachia, Knox County and the surrounding communities are selected as an ideal natural testbed to demonstrate how the proposed delivery mechanism and framework can address infrastructure challenges, hurdle interaction and communication barriers, and help improve access to necessary medications among individuals with substance use disorder.The goal of this SCC-PG project is to create connected systems and intelligent technologies to advance the understanding of interactions and perceptions among people who use drugs, healthcare providers, and government agencies; and build upon the in-depth understanding to engage communities to enable novel practices to treat substance use disorder and reduce illicit drug use. Specifically, the project aims to 1) develop community perception models that reveal how patients’ choices and concerns and public’s acceptance on truck- and drone-enabled delivery mechanisms influence the service patterns and operations, 2) create new truck- and drone-assisted healthcare delivery frameworks and operations through integration of these quantified perception models and operation constraints from healthcare providers and regulatory agencies, and 3) establish novel community engagement models that channel information in a connected way, through which patients, healthcare providers, scientists, engineers, government officials, and volunteers are all involved in a timely fashion to foster informed and all-inclusive decisions and practices to achieve connected interventions and treatment. This research is expected to lay a foundation for more comprehensive design and control of innovative mobility systems and connected and collaborative frameworks that span social and technical dimensions with community engagement to improve medication access of underserved people with substance use disorder.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

尽管在打击药物使用和探索新的治疗和康复策略方面做出了相当大的努力，但由于基础设施挑战、无法进入药店、患者无法驾驶和缺乏交通工具，目前的做法无法将农村地区服务不足的低收入社区的许多患者与可用的医疗资源联系起来。应对这些问题涉及不同社区利益相关者之间的互动，包括医疗保健提供者，研究机构，政府机构，非营利组织和社区居民。然而，这些利益攸关方通常是孤立的或组织效率低下，导致社区协调不平衡，药物使用对策决策效率低下。为了应对这些挑战和差距，智能互联社区规划补助金（SCC-PG）将超越目前的做法，通过创新的社区协调机制将多个社区利益相关者联系起来，并通过新型移动技术将农村地区的居民与城市医疗资源联系起来，从而促进药物使用障碍的治疗。诺克斯县位于阿巴拉契亚的中心地带，被选作理想的自然试验台，以展示拟议的交付机制和框架如何解决基础设施挑战、障碍互动和沟通障碍，并帮助改善物质使用障碍患者获得必要药物的机会。本SCC的目标是-PG项目旨在创建互联系统和智能技术，以促进对药物使用者，医疗保健提供者和政府机构之间的相互作用和感知的理解;并在深入了解的基础上，让社区参与进来，使治疗药物使用障碍和减少非法药物使用的新做法成为可能。具体而言，该项目旨在1）开发社区感知模型，揭示患者的选择和关注以及公众对卡车和无人机支持的交付机制的接受程度如何影响服务模式和运营，2）通过整合这些量化的感知模型和来自医疗服务提供者和监管机构的运营约束，创建新的卡车和无人机辅助医疗服务框架和运营，3）建立新型的社区参与模式，以连通的方式传递信息，通过这种模式，患者、医疗保健提供者、科学家、工程师、政府官员和志愿者都能及时参与，以促进知情和包容各方的决策和实践，实现连通的干预和治疗。这项研究有望为更全面地设计和控制创新的移动系统以及连接和协作框架奠定基础，这些框架跨越社会和技术层面，与社区参与，以改善服务不足的物质使用障碍患者的药物获取。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.