Dr. Jay Poole (Social Work) received new funding from Cone Health Foundation for the project “Addressing the Opiate Crisis through Harm Reduction.” Fran Pearson, Dr. Kenneth Gruber, Charles Holleman, and Guillermo Tremols are co-principal investigators on the project.
It is well established that opiate addiction and overdoses from opiates is a national and local crisis. According to Guilford County Emergency Management Services, there are, on average, 30 overdoses per week in Guilford County. In an effort to respond to this crisis, the Congregational Social Work Education Initiative (CSWEI) and the Congregational Nurse Program (CNP), with generous funding from the Cone Health Foundation, operated a pilot project from April 2018 – present. The researchers learned several lessons through this pilot project. One of the most important is that stigma and transportation are two of the most onerous barriers in getting people to utilize the services provided. Also, many people on the East side of Greensboro were identified, through outreach efforts, as needing services but having no way to get over to the College Park location. With these lessons in mind, the CSWEI and CNP team propose to continue working with Guilford County’s Solution to the Opioid Problem (GCSTOP) in association with UNCG to enhance a collaboration that will focus on counseling overdose survivors and others at risk of opiate overdose to seek substance use treatment or adopt harm reduction strategies to reduce their risk of overdose and other negative health impacts (i.e., HIV, Hep C, STIs). Recipients of this counseling service also will be directed towards getting primary care services.
