Recovery Resource Center Peer Navigation Initiative

The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) Program is the first major federal substance use disorder treatment and recovery legislation in 40 years and the most comprehensive effort to address the opioid epidemic. CARA establishes a comprehensive, coordinated, and balanced strategy through enhanced grant programs that expand prevention and education efforts while also promoting treatment and recovery. The Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Site-based program was developed as part of the CARA legislation signed into law on July 22, 2016. In FY 2017, the Overdose Outreach Projects will provide funding and technical assistance to units of local government, and Indian tribal governments to plan, develop, and implement comprehensive diversion and alternatives to incarceration programs that expand outreach, treatment, and recovery efforts to individuals impacted by the opioid epidemic who come into contact with the justice system. Funding may be used to connect survivors of a non-fatal overdose with treatment providers or a peer recovery coach in an emergency department; provide survivors of non-fatal overdoses, and their friends and family, with access to naloxone and other recovery support services; provide prioritized—ideally immediate—access to detox and treatment services; overdose prevention education and community outreach and engage a research partner to conduct action research providing skills and assistance in identifying performance measures, tracking measures to assist in the improvement of program implementation and fidelity, providing subject matter expertise and guidance.

The Jefferson County Board of Health will create the Recovery Resource Center Peer Navigation Initiative (RPC-PNI). The project has an overarching goal of a 30% reduction in opioid overdose deaths in Jefferson County. In 2014, Jefferson County reported a 140% spike in heroin deaths, and from 2013 to 2016 it underwent a 340% increase in fentanyl deaths. The program will provide utilize a peer navigator to connect 600 individuals to treatment services immediately after a non-fatal overdose or the identification of a need for treatment services absent an overdose. RPC-PNI will also convene a multi-disciplinary oversight team to develop effective strategies and provide overdose prevention education to 750 individuals in the community. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Emergency Medicine will serve as the project’s research partner.

CA/NCF