InvisALERT Solutions – ObservSMART

Archive for the ‘Winter 2020 Issue’ Category

Transformations at MHA Westchester: Integrated Services to Address the Opioid Epidemic

Current national trends indicate that each year more people die of overdoses—the majority of which involve opioid drugs—than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, or any armed conflict since the end of World War II. Each day 90 Americans die prematurely from an overdose that...

Samaritan Daytop Village and Manatus Development Group Break Ground on “The Richard Pruss Wellness Center” in The Bronx

Samaritan Daytop Village and Manatus Development Group broke ground on The Richard Pruss Wellness Center – a “one-stop shop” for behavioral and primary health care in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx on November 13, 2019. Named in honor of the late Richard Pruss, President Emeritus and...

CBHS IPA and CBC IPA Joint Initiatives to Increase Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT)

The New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS), as a recipient of a State Opioid Response Grant (SOR) from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) put out a grant with the objective of providing funding to provider networks to assess...

Opioid Epidemic and Partnerships: Working Together to Solve Problems

It feels like not a day goes by where the sheer scale of the opioid epidemic is not felt. The epidemic impacts nearly every American through our families, friends, loved ones, co-workers and classmates. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2017: On average, 130 Americans died...

The Case for Community Recovery Centers

According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, “Every day, more than 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids.” In 2018 alone, opioids claimed the lives of more than 3,000 New Yorkers, according to the New York State Department of Health. The misuse of and...

Anti-Racist Organizational Transformation: Questions and Answers with Mary Pender Greene, LCSW- R, CGP and Alan Siskind, PhD

Mary Pender Greene, LCSW-R, CGP, is a psychotherapist, career/executive coach, trainer, and consultant with a private practice in Midtown Manhattan. She has 20+ years of experience helping individuals, couples, companies, and nonprofits. Mary is the President & CEO of MPG Consulting, a...

Taking Care of Our Recovery Professionals

Drug addiction is a disease that needs to be treated and talked about like any other disease. The devastating opioid epidemic that has left no community untouched has only heightened the conversation, as treatment professionals and advocates engage policymakers, researchers and communities-in-need,...

Pain and The Nation’s Opioid Epidemic: An Interview with Luana Colloca, MD, PhD, MS

The so-called “opioid epidemic” is a far more complex social phenomenon than it appears to be when politicians and pundits propose solutions to it. They work largely from a simplistic and only partially true narrative that lately concludes that the villains are the drug companies that promoted...

Peers as an Effective Strategy for Engaging Individuals with Addictions in Recovery

As New York expands its Recovery Oriented System of Care (ROSC), the utilization of peers within hospital emergency rooms, addiction treatment, and recovery support providers, has demonstrated tremendous value, and opportunities to achieve enhanced engagement and retention of individuals in need of...

The Need for Community-Based Early Intervention for Youth and Young Adults at Early Stages of Substance Use/Abuse

There is a serious gap in the continuum of services between Prevention and Treatment services for high risk youth and young adults at early stages of substance use. When we speak to these youth what we often hear is, “Prevention, education? I know it all! I could even teach the course!” Or,...