Effort will enhance services

Jay County is getting some additional help to fight the opioid epidemic.

Jay County Drug Prevention Coalition announced recently that it will be part of an effort, supported by a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Health Resources and Service Administration’s Rural Communities Opioid Response Program, to improve services to help prevent and treat substance misuse problems in Jay and Blackford counties. The effort will be known as the Consortium for Opioids Response Engagement-East Central Indiana.

Purdue Healthcare Advisors, through its Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, and IU Health are leading the effort in partnership with Blackford County Community Corrections, Hester Hollis Concern Center, A Better Life – Brianna’s Hope and the drug prevention coalition.

“Public health outcomes in Indiana as compared to other regions of the country are in the bottom quartile,” said Melanie Cline, assistant director for Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering and director of Purdue Healthcare Advisors in a press release. “We need to do better job of thinking creatively to utilize existing resources and build new ways of working together particularly in our rural communities so we can thrive. We are using the power of Purdue’s land grant mission for outreach in health care at the community level. Purdue and its partners can help to build the relationships and connections to the health system that have been missing.”

Jay and Blackford counties were chosen in part because they are considered “medically underserved communities that have seen significant mortality and opioid-use rates.”

In 2019, Jay County was in the top 10% among Indiana communities most at risk for substance abuse, according to data from the Indiana State Epidemiological Outcomes Workgroup. Blackford County’s overdose death rate was more than twice the state average and three times the national average from 2014 through 2018.

While those rates have come down, the Indiana Drug Data Dashboard still shows Jay County’s rate of non-fatal drug overdose to be one-third higher than the rest of the state. The drug abuse dashboard shows Jay County had nine overdose deaths in 2019, 12 in 2018 and 15 in 2017. (Complete 2020 statistics have not yet been updated.)

Kimbra Reynolds, executive director of Jay County Drug Prevention Coalition, said the new initiative stemmed from Purdue Extension efforts to improve services in Blackford County. Jay County was brought into the fold in order to both serve as a model because of some of the steps it has already taken and to continue to evaluate and improve services locally.

“Part of the reason they wanted Jay is because we’ve begun that relationship with IU Health here,” she said. “Not just us, but Brianna’s Hope and the community has really began to embrace what (IU Health) is doing. … They wanted to look at how these things were working in Jay County …”

“In the past few years, IU Health has made a significant investment in east-central Indiana to increase access to health care services, including behavioral health,” said Dave Hyatt, president of IU Health Blackford and former president of IU Health Jay, in a press release. “The important work of this consortium is a strong response to Gov. (Eric) Holcomb’s 2017 call for health care to implement a data-driven system focused on SUD prevention, early intervention, treatment, recovery and enforcement. And it aligns well with IU Health’s $50 million strategic plan to undertake a broad array of addiction research, policy analysis and workforce development programs across the state.”

Reynolds added that sometimes the various agencies — law enforcement, recovery services, hospitals, etc. — become “siloed” and that the Consortium for Opioids Response Engagement-East Central Indiana will serve as another avenue to pull those organizations into a network to serve those seeking treatment and recovery.

Cline will serve as the project coordinator as Purdue Healthcare Advisors and IU Health work together on a system that will evaluate what it takes to get into substance abuse recovery services, where there are breakdowns in those services and where there is a need to advocate for changes. It will also consider ways to provide additional screening tools and training for front-line healthcare workers to assist those who may be in need of substance abuse services or therapy.

Specifically for the drug prevention coalition, Reynolds said it will offer an opportunity to assess how well recovery efforts are working.

“This allows us to look and what we’re doing, where can we improve and who do we need to collaborate more with,” she added.

The three-year program will run through August 2024. Reynolds said while it’s unlikely the partnership would receive another grant through the Rural Communities Opioid Response Program, the process the partner organizations implement over the next three years could open the door to other grant opportunities.