All three major hospitals in Union County are partnering with local and County law enforcement as well as a Roselle-based nonprofit group in an effort to help drug overdose victims break the cycle of addiction.
Through a series of collaborative meetings held during the last year, the Union County Opioid Response Initiative was conceived and launched in order to improve the quality of services offered to individuals suffering from drug addiction, increase accessibility to community-level addiction resources, and streamline the fashion in which individuals are either brought to or seek help at inpatient and outpatient facilities across the area.
This marked the continuation of a partnership that also resulted in a November 2016 announcement that Trinitas, in Elizabeth, Robert Wood Johnson in Rahway, and Atlantic Health System, which includes Overlook Medical Center in Summit, had all signed memorandums of understanding with the Prosecutor’s Office pledging to provide new supplies of the lifesaving drug naloxone to Union County municipal police departments on a quarterly, on-demand basis.
The Prosecutor’s Office had initially started distributing naloxone to those departments in July 2014, with individual deployments of the drug by police climbing from slightly more than 60 countywide in 2015 up to more than 150 in 2016.
During that time, the Prosecutor’s Office and its partners agreed that more needed to be done to bridge the gap between simply saving lives and getting overdose victims the rehabilitative help they need.
Therefore, the Initiative’s first major step, taken late last year, was to design and distribute to Union County municipal police departments a two-sided, laminated resource guide that today is provided to all recipients of police-administered naloxone.
The guide features contact and background information for a wide range of local service providers offering treatment, counseling, rehabilitation, detox, and more.
The Initiative progressed to result in Trinitas, Robert Wood Johnson, and Overlook each introducing its own program through which addiction recovery specialists meet with overdose victims on-site at the hospital.
Trinitas funded its program at the start of the year and services will be available starting today, with one full-time and one part-time paid staff member with LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker)/LCADC (Licensed Clinical Alcohol and Drug Counselor) certification assigned to the task. These staffers will be available as often as possible during high-volume hours in the Trinitas emergency room, including as much weekend coverage as the hospital’s budget allows, according to McCreath.
“Initially, the clinician will explain the purpose of the service and encourage the patient’s engagement. The clinician will then conduct an assessment as well as assess motivation for treatment,” McCreath said. “For those consumers who accept services, the clinician will link them to the appropriate level of care. For those who need support managing the transition to the next level of care, the clinician will provide direct supports (temporary housing, replacement clothing, meals, etc.) and/or accompany them to that next level of care.”
Robert Wood Johnson in Rahway launched its program in October 2016, with its contracted addiction recovery specialists available on an on-call basis, 24-7, supplemented by certified emergency psychiatric emergency services staff and registered nurses. Its program is funded by a state grant.
Overlook anticipates launching its program in May 2017, with volunteer addiction recovery specialists being trained directly through Prevention Links.
All three hospitals have agreed to share their program data and outcomes with the Initiative in order to track effectiveness and tailor future efforts to meet specific needs of county residents battling addiction.
“The data collected will enhance existing community health assessments and will frontline Union County’s need for secure federal funding in order to combat the prescription opioid and heroin crisis,” Capaci said. “Further, adequate funding will allow for enhanced program infrastructure and implementation processes, heightened engagement of key stakeholders, and timely expansions of the Initiative in areas where greater need is assessed.”
Specifically, Capaci noted, the information obtained will:
• Include non-identifying information on each individual receiving services;
• Provide timely data necessary for accurate trend analysis, including;
o Understanding of the individuals who participate in the program
o Understanding of changing environmental factors
• Inform level-of-care criteria and treatment proceedings;
• Measure community-level, substance abuse-related health outcomes;
• Inform opportunities for health promotion and prevention;
• Assist in the assessment of Initiative best practices; and
• Inform fiscal management and planning
Via quarterly usage reports, it is expected that the data collected also will be utilized by state and federal policymakers and researchers in order to inform future substance use policy and practice, Capaci added.
“In the past, law enforcement’s role in efforts to stem the tide of drug addiction was mostly limited to identifying, apprehending, and prosecuting those responsible for distributing illegal narcotics. Today, however, considering the scope of the problem, it’s clear that we need to get much more involved in prevention and treatment in addition to enforcement,” Prosecutor Park said. “This Initiative offers us a chance to do just that, and it is our expectation that everyone who lives and works in Union County will benefit as a result.”
A total of 249 people have died due to drug overdoses in Union County since 2011, including 52 in 2016. All but nine of those 52 victims died due to acute heroin intoxication, prescription opioid intoxication, or both.
Those statistics mirror national trends. More than 50,000 Americans suffered a fatal overdose in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with that cause now eclipsing auto accidents as the nation’s most common type of accidental death. The majority of drug overdose deaths nationally (more than six out of 10) involve some type of opioid.
New Jersey was one of 19 states designated by the CDC as experiencing a statistically significant rise in its drug overdose death rate from 2014 to 2015, with an increase of 16.4 percent.