In 2018, the National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Inc. (CDC Foundation) was awarded funding by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Cooperative Agreement number CDC-RFAOT18-1804: Technical Assistance for Response to Public Health or Healthcare Crises, to assist state health departments in building capacity to combat the rapid increase of deaths related to opioid overdoses across the country. The CDC Foundation created a surge staffing model and quickly hired 80 field employees and 16 contractors among various specialties to place across 13 states with a demonstrated need for surge staffing. The CDC Foundation created this toolkit to contribute to public health knowledge by providing an emergency response surge staffing process model. The purpose of this toolkit is to contribute the following: Experience with developing and implementing a surge staffing model for the opioid crisis response; Considerations for using this model to hire surge staff in future emergency responses based on feedback from stakeholders and field staff, as well as a reflection of our experience; and Provide a recommended surge staffing checklist, hiring tracker and an equipment tracker for future emergency responses.