摘要：Having identified gaps in implementation of Rhode Island's syringe access law and police occupational safety education, public health and police professionals developed police training to boost legal knowledge, improve syringe access attitudes, and address needlestick injuries. Baseline data (94 officers) confirmed anxiety about needlestick injuries, poor legal knowledge, and occupational risk overestimation. Before training, respondents believed that syringe access promotes drug use (51%), increases likelihood of police needlestick injuries (58%), and fails to reduce epidemics (38%). Pretraining to posttraining evaluation suggested significant shifts in legal and occupational safety knowledge; changes in attitudes toward syringe access were promising. Training that combines occupational safety with syringe access content can help align law enforcement with public health goals. Additional research is needed to assess street-level effect and to inform intervention tailoring. KEY FINDINGS ▪Baseline data from an in-service training to align policing and public health efforts targeting injecting drug users in Rhode Island suggested that police have negative attitudes toward syringe access initiatives, poor knowledge of syringe possession law, and inaccurate assessment of occupational risk related to needlestick injuries, paralleled by high anxiety toward this risk. ▪In-service 30-minute training combining occupational safety information with public health content significantly improved trainees' legal and occupational safety knowledge; although positive, shifts in attitudes toward syringe access initiatives failed to reach significance. ▪Evaluations of future training should include linked pretraining and posttraining samples, limit participant distraction, and adopt parallel surveillance components to assess shifts on the street level. ▪Additional interventions, including management and peer-driven efforts, may be needed to help shift entrenched police attitudes toward syringe access initiatives. IN RESPONSE TO THE confirmed effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of syringe access initiatives to reduce injection-related disease transmission, jurisdictions including Rhode Island authorized syringe exchange programs and deregulated over-the-counter syringe sales. 1 Police in Rhode Island remained misinformed about these policies or boycotted them as enabling illegal injection drug use. 2 Mistrust and lack of clarity about criminal law discourage injecting drug users (IDUs) from engaging in safe injection and acknowledging syringe possession during searches, leading to increased risk of police needlestick injuries. 3 Police occupational safety trainings typically fail to address needlestick injuries. 2
