Project SHIELD 2.0

September 1, 2026 updated by: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Project SHIELD 2.0: Police Education to Support Public Health in Kentucky

The project is a pragmatic, quasi-experimental hybrid type II effectiveness-implementation trial of a structural HIV prevention intervention to address police behavior (arrests and referrals) and ultimately improve health among people who use drugs. The study involves a novel implementation strategy that engages behavioral health workers as "local champions" in the delivery of an evidence-based police education program (SHIELD training intervention). In addition to examining implementation outcomes, primary outcomes focus on assessing effectiveness of the intervention among police (specifically in reducing drug-related arrests and promoting referrals to Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) treatment. The investigator's overarching effectiveness hypothesis is that after law enforcement organizations receive the SHIELD training intervention, they will be more likely to refer people who use drugs to MOUD treatment and other health and social services, rather than arresting them for low level possession offenses. The study will be conducted across different counties in Appalachian Kentucky.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

150

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

  • Name: Skylar M Chapdelaine, BA
  • Phone Number: 4138961552
  • Email: schapde1@jh.edu

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Kentucky
      • Lexington, Kentucky, United States, 40506
        • Recruiting
        • University Of Kentucky
        • Contact:
        • Contact:
        • Principal Investigator:
          • Jennifer Havens, PhD

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • An adult over the age of 18 years old
  • Currently employed in a law enforcement agency in one of the nine counties participating in the trial

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Only adult participants over the age of 18 will be recruited into the study, and we will not restrict eligibility based on gender, race, or any other socio-demographic characteristics.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Other
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: SHIELD 2.0
SHIELD is an evidence-based police education training program. Participants in this study are law enforcement officers who will receive the SHIELD training modules.
Behavioral: SHIELD 2.0
SHIELD is an evidence-based police education training program that has been demonstrated to change police behavior (arrest and referrals) and improve outcomes among police and people who use drugs in NIH-funded and other research studies. The original intervention delivery relied on academic teams, limiting sustainability and scalability. Our novel "SHIELD 2.0" implementation strategy aims to address these limitations by capacitating the local behavioral health workforce to implement the steps of the SHIELD process, specifically to complete the delivery of the SHIELD intervention to local police officers.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
Frequency of Law enforcement officer self-reported referrals to MOUD
Time Frame: From baseline up to 12 months post SHIELD training
From baseline up to 12 months post SHIELD training
Frequency of Law enforcement officer self-reported drug-related arrests
Time Frame: From baseline up to 12 months post SHIELD training
From baseline up to 12 months post SHIELD training

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Law enforcement officer self-reported stress as assessed by survey
Time Frame: From baseline up to 12 months post SHIELD training
Survey scores range from 0-12, with lower scores indicating a lower level of stress
From baseline up to 12 months post SHIELD training
Law enforcement officer self-reported burnout as assessed by survey
Time Frame: From baseline up to 12 months post SHIELD training
Survey scores range from 0-24, with lower scores indicating a lower level of burnout
From baseline up to 12 months post SHIELD training
Law enforcement officer self-reported job satisfaction as assessed by survey
Time Frame: From baseline up to 12 months post SHIELD training
Survey scores range from 0-6, with lower scores indicating a lower level of job satisfaction
From baseline up to 12 months post SHIELD training

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Collaborators

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
San Diego State University
University of California, San Diego
Brown University
University of Kentucky
Northeastern University

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Javier Cepeda, PhD, MPH, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology
  • Principal Investigator: Eileen Pitpitan, PhD, MA, San Diego State University School of Social Work
  • Principal Investigator: Leo Beletsky, JD, MPH, Northeastern University School of Law, Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Helpful Links

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

June 25, 2026

Primary Completion (Estimated)

December 31, 2027

Study Completion (Estimated)

April 30, 2029

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 1, 2026

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 1, 2026

First Posted (Actual)

September 4, 2026

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

September 4, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 1, 2026

Last Verified

September 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • IRB00541902
  • R33DA060622 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

IPD Plan Description

The counties in which this study will take place are small and, for the most part, demographically homogeneous. As such, to protect participant confidentiality we will not share individual participant data.

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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