Community college students demonstrate disproportionately elevated rates of substance use compared to their four-year university counterparts, yet exhibit significantly lower utilization rates of campus-based support services. Existing literature has established that harm reduction approaches and face-to-face interventions are effective in mitigating substance-related harms, while concurrently identifying punitive policy frameworks as critical barriers that impede help-seeking behaviors among students. However, prior research has predominantly concentrated on four-year institutional settings, resulting in substantial knowledge gaps regarding effective substance use policies and intervention strategies specifically tailored for community college populations. Therefore, the present study utilizes the Harm Reduction and Overdose Prevention Education for Students (HOPES) Project to systematically assess substance use support services across community colleges in Health and Human Services Region IX. The primary objective is to examine whether the availability of overdose prevention resources, treatment referrals, engagement opportunities, and opioid treatment services is associated with reduced implementation of punitive substance use policies.
The study examined all 158 community colleges within HHS Region IX. Data were collected using a structured 45-item extraction form (25 forced choice, 7 Likert scale, and 13 open-ended items) organized into 12 domains covering counseling services, health services, student resources, and substance use curricula, with each research assistant reviewing approximately 48 websites to ensure reliability. The analysis employed separate binary logistic regression models to examine associations between four key independent variables—comprehensiveness of overdose prevention resources (0-5 scale), comprehensiveness of opioid treatment and prevention resources (0-5 scale), availability of treatment referrals (binary), and engagement opportunities frequency—and the dependent variable of punitive policy responses, with both unadjusted and adjusted models controlling for substance mention on college websites.
The study findings revealed significant variability in substance use resources across the 158 community college websites, with alcohol and tobacco being the most frequently mentioned substances, while most colleges provided only minimal overdose prevention information and notably sparse opioid-specific prevention resources, with treatment referrals available on less than half of the reviewed websites and engagement opportunities related to overdose prevention being infrequent across institutions. Logistic regression analyses demonstrated that colleges with greater comprehensiveness of overdose prevention resources, availability of treatment referrals, and engagement opportunities such as workshops or peer education were significantly less likely to implement punitive policy responses to student substance use, with these associations persisting even after adjusting for substance mentions on websites. However, the comprehensiveness of opioid treatment and prevention resources showed no significant association with punitive policy likelihood.
Takeaway: Community colleges with comprehensive overdose prevention resources, treatment referrals, and engagement opportunities are significantly less likely to implement punitive substance use policies, suggesting that harm reduction investments could potentially shift institutional approaches from punishment-based to health-centered frameworks.