The Erie County Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program

The Erie County Department of Health is applying under category 1a: Local Applications (urban area). The proposed Erie County project will serve the area of Erie County, NY, which is a mixture of urban, suburban, tribal, and rural municipalities in Western NY State. Of particular significance to this program is the largest urban area in upstate NY, the City of Buffalo, which is home to a historically marginalized community dealing with significant social determinants of health and health disparities. The purpose of this project is to reduce the impact of illicit opioids, stimulants, and other substances on individuals and communities by decreasing overdose deaths and mitigating the effects on crime victims in Erie County, with special emphasis on areas that have been historically underserved, marginalized, and negatively affected by continued poverty and inequality, through comprehensive and collaborative initiatives. The project will be driven by the Erie County Director of Harm Reduction, who oversees the Erie County Overdose Prevention Task Force, which meets quarterly; the Task Force will be the multidisciplinary coordinating body for this project.  
 
The Erie County project will consist of the Primary Activity of embedding social workers, peers, and/or persons with lived experience at all intercepts of the Sequential Intercept Model to assist persons with justice involvement, help their families navigate the justice system, and  increase their connection to treatment and recovery support services. This includes law enforcement, pretrial and probation agencies, prosecutor-led programs, legal defense agencies, child welfare agencies, courts, and jails to support community reentry. The project team will consist of the Erie County Director of Harm Reduction; the University at Buffalo (UB) HOPE of Erie County Project Director; and 3.75 Certified Recovery Peer Advocates (Peer Support Specialists). Across all intercepts, the project team will provide formal peer support services to 450 at-risk individuals who will be the intended beneficiaries over the three-year grant period; 100 in year 1, and 175 each in years 2 and 3. The project will have the expected outcomes of reducing overdoses, and of providing harm reduction education/training services, including overdose prevention education, to partner agencies and individuals across all points of the sequential intercept, along with a research and evaluation component conducted by UB. 
 
Subrecipient, the UB Primary Care Research Institute shall assist the Erie County Department of Health in achieving the overarching goal of the program by providing programmatic, quality assurance, and evaluation services.