Entitled, “Texas Opioid Prevention for Students (TOPS),” the team’s selected proposal marks both a new beginning and the culmination of years of work, according to Principal Investigator Ninfa Peña-Purcell, PhD, MCHES, research scientist at the Center for Community Health and Aging. “Our work is about giving youth the resources they need to choose healthier paths,” Peña-Purcell said. “This funding represents an urgent call to action, and we are fully accountable for turning it into meaningful, measurable change. When we invest in our youth, we invest in a more hopeful and resilient future.”

After an increase in opioid medication prescriptions in the 1990s, opioid-involved overdose deaths in the United States doubled from 1999-2010, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. From 2018 to 2022, the Texas Department of State Health Services reported an increase of more than 75% of drug poisonings, rising to a death rate of 15.8 deaths per 100,000 Texas residents. While adult overdose rates have flattened in the United States, youth overdose rates have tripled year over year, every year since 2019—an issue made more complicated by the wide array of individuals affected by opioid addiction, said Principal Investigator Joy Alonzo, MEng, PharmD, clinical associate professor at the at the College of Pharmacy and co-chair of the Texas A&M Opioid Task Force. “Opioid misuse doesn’t just affect one group—it impacts students from all backgrounds,” she said. “That’s what makes prevention so complex from a public health standpoint. Our interventions can’t focus on a single demographic; they must reach and resonate with every student.”  

The team is tapping into Texas A&M University’s infrastructure, pooling expertise from across the Texas A&M System—from health sciences to engineering—an approach necessitated by the magnitude of the opioid crisis, said Principal Investigator Marcia Ory, PhD, Regents and Distinguished Professor of environmental and occupational health at the School of Public Health and co-chair of the Texas A&M Opioid Task Force.  

“The Texas A&M team was chosen because it has the infrastructure to support this project,” Ory said. “We have the scientific and clinical expertise. We also have the connections with treatment with treatment providers, state-wide resources, and partners that are boots on the ground in highly impacted communities across the state. This is a big problem, and it’s one we are prepared to tackle.” 

TOPS takes a comprehensive, multifaceted approach to opioid misuse prevention education. The initiative focuses on meeting students’ real-world needs by incorporating challenges students face today, encouraging the development of life skills and refusal strategies tailored to today’s teens.  

This holistic approach includes Think Smart, an innovative opioid misuse prevention education program that includes classroom and parent resources. As part of the technical support offered by the team’s programming strategy, Alonzo said teachers will receive training on deploying Think Smart to equip Texas youth in problem-solving, refusal skills and age-appropriate harm-reduction strategies. Additional, youth-centric wrap-around resources offered by TOPS will include a graphic novel and mobile phone app to further reinforce concepts. 

As these efforts roll out, the team will be monitoring implementation using a robust, geospatially enabled database management and analytics program. They have partnered with Keith Biggers, PhD, director of the Texas A&M Center for Applied Technology at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), to build TAMU Insights, which promises to track grant effectiveness in near-real time.  

“It’s going to be something that no one’s ever seen before,” Alonzo said. “Insights will employ our best knowledge about relational database technology for geographically distributed, field-based data collection.” 

TAMU Insights will showcase data trends on a live-updating map featuring a public interface to provide live snapshots of outreach and engagement across the state.  

This immediate accessibility adds a layer of accountability, Alonzo emphasized, equipping Texans with information they can trust. “We want to make sure that the people of the state of Texas know that we want to develop interventions that make a difference and that we can prove it,” she said. 

TOPS plans to mobilize grass-roots support, Peña-Purcell emphasized, applying critical lessons learned during the grant’s first year to inform an evolving, statewide rollout shaped by ongoing input from schools, families and community stakeholders. “We recognize that each community is unique, and we’re prepared to adapt,” Peña-Purcell said. “Our commitment is not only to evidence-based programs, but to being responsive—flexible, nimble and open to pivoting when needed—so we can discover what truly works in local contexts.”