Local anti-heroin effort sees success, gets boost

Getting Cincinnati area residents who survive overdoses into treatment is a winning strategy to break the cycle of relapse and addiction. It's gaining attention and funding.

A new funding collaboration this week announced its first grants, with $100,000 each to Colerain Township and Clermont County so they can enhance their quick response teams.

The idea behind the teams is to catch people within days of their overdose, give them support and guide them into treatment. Roughly 80 percent of the 250 clients served by Colerain's team have stayed in treatment.

The collaborative, called the Funders’ Response to the Heroin Epidemic, has a mission to end the heroin and opioid epidemic, is providing the grants over a three-year period.

Colerain Township created the first quick response team program in Hamilton County in 2015, and it's getting results, said Dan Meloy, the township's director of public safety.

The township's teams have been in operation for 18 months. "The most significant impact is the percentage of persons getting into treatment," Meloy said.

In addition, people with addiction are going to the township's safety forces for help. "Whether the person showed up at a fire station or stopped a police officer on the street, asking for help, we made the connection and initiated the process for help," Meloy said.

The new funding will give the Colerain program peer engagement specialists – people in addiction recovery with professional training from the Addiction Services Council.

“We want to include somebody who really understands recovery and knows how to move and work and live within our recovery network community,” said Nan Franks, executive director of the organization, which already is involved with the quick response team practice in the region.

“We want to have somebody standing by their side at those tricky points,” Franks said. That may be when the person is seeking housing, needs transportation or a job.

Two Clermont Recovery Center peer specialists recently joined a new quick response team program in Union Township, which will use the grant money to grow.

Kristy Mudd, a peer support specialist, and Jessica Johnson, a counselor case manager, have been on the job about two weeks, and Mudd said she's already seeing results with a client.

"He'd overdosed multiple times in the past," she said. "When I first went out, he had no hope."

The team lined up outpatient treatment coupled with injectable naltrexone, a medication that blocks the effects of heroin and opioids.

"In a few days time ... he had life back to his face, color back," Mudd said, "and hope."

"We don't give up on people," Johnson said,"even if that just means holding their hand and walking with them to the food bank."

The quick response concept has been taking hold throughout Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Norwood put its quick response teams in action last year, and other communities are starting theirs.

The funding collaborative is operated by Interact for Change, a nonprofit subsidiary of the regional health nonprofit Interact for Health. The collaborative “is focused on fueling community efforts to end the heroin epidemic by expanding and investing in effective practices,” said Kelly Firesheets, senior program officer of Interact for Health and representative of the group. “

Reporter Jennie Key contributed.