Raimondo launches campaign to combat opioid overdose epidemic

PROVIDENCE – Calling the opioid overdose crisis the most urgent and unanticipated priority she’s faced during her gubernatorial tenure, Gov. Gina M. Raimondo announced an expanded public education campaign that encourages people to seek treatment and recovery options and aims to reduce the stigma of addiction.

Building on her Overdose Prevention Action Plan and its Recovery is Possible Campaign, which has as its theme, “Addiction is a disease. Recovery is possible,” the public education campaign will use television and radio spots, bus advertising posters and a paid social media campaign to recount Rhode Islanders’ personal stories involving opioid addiction. Most of the material will appear in both English and Spanish, and the campaign also includes a new dedicated phone line. Staffed by English- and Spanish-speaking licensed chemical dependency counselors, the phone line will be open seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and connects callers in crisis to treatment and recovery centers.

Funds of $100,000 – from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant – will maintain this campaign through January 2017, said Sophie O’Connell, a spokeswoman for Rhode Island’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services. RDW Group and Ocean State Video developed and produced the campaign ads, with oversight and direction from the Rhode Island Department of Health. A $42,000 donation from the DelPrete Family Foundation currently funds the phone line.

Raimondo has “really stepped up to the plate” by emphasizing that addiction is a disease and recovery is possible and working to eliminate the stigma of drug addiction, Fox Wetle, Brown University School of Public Health dean, told Providence Business News. In contrast to many other states that focus exclusively on addressing the supply side, Rhode Island is focusing on the demand side of opioid addiction by making Nalaxone widely accessible and providing treatment options to those addicted, she said.

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In related news, the Rhode Island Department of Health and Brown University School of Public Health launched a new website, preventoverdoseri.org, which offers resource information about prevention, treatment and recovery services and a dashboard that tracks the state’s collaborative lifesaving initiatives, with benchmarks reflecting current data and specific goals. For example, the annual benchmark for overdose deaths is 257 (with an acknowledgement that data on overdose deaths from the latter part of 2015 is still provisional), and a goal of reducing that to 170 per month by 2018.

Other benchmarked goals focus on reducing the number of overdose-related emergency department visits and the number of opioid prescriptions issued to the same individual, as well as increasing the number of people receiving medication-assisted treatment, the number of peer recovery coaches and the number of contacts coaches make with addicted individuals. Currently, these benchmark estimates are being updated quarterly; as the data collection and analysis becomes more efficient, they may be updated more frequently, said Manning Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Brown University School of Public Health Brandon D.L. Marshall.

Brown University School of Public Health provides research and data that help to inform good policy decisions, said Wetle, and information that assists advocacy organizations in improving their opioid treatment services for those struggling with addiction. “Everybody has had a family member, relative or a friend who struggles with this problem [of addiction]; nobody gets off scot-free,” Wetle said. “People who become public about these issues are very brave [by] helping with the destigmatization process. … This is a problem at all levels of society.”

Data from preventoverdoseri.org indicate that, in the past five years, more than 1,000 Rhode Islanders have died from opioid overdoses. In the Ocean State, opioid overdoses contribute to more deaths than do guns and cars combined, and in 2014, the state ranked the sixth highest in the nation for overdose death rates.

Asked about the campaign’s timing, Wetle acknowledged a number of factors, including the work done by prominent leaders in the state like Dr. Josiah (Jody) Rich, the critical mass of too many overdose deaths, and leadership from Raimondo, DOH officials and the General Assembly, among others. Raimondo, said Wetle, “is biting the bullet and saying ‘This is important.’ ”

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