Posted: Tuesday, April 25, 2017

A common saying when addressing recovery from substance use is to “meet people where they’re at.” Anchor Recovery Center’s Anchor ED and Anchor MORE Programs are giving that phrase new meaning by going out into the community and making direct connections with people suffering from addiction issues. Both programs are staffed and managed by people with lived experience with substance use who use what they’ve learned in recovery to help others.

Anchor ED (Emergency Department) is a program that connects individuals who are in the emergency room because of an opioid overdose with recovery services, including a meeting with a certified peer recovery coach. The program is an initiative between The Providence Center; the Rhode Island Department of Health; and the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Hospitals. Now in place for two and a half years, the program is in every hospital in Rhode Island.

Anchor ED’s services include:

• Providing education on overdose, prevention and on obtaining Naloxone, a drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose
• Providing additional resources to family members
• Contacting the individual after they are released from the ED with a follow-up phone call
  
  

“We’re successful in large part because we have a great staff of peer recovery coaches who have seen it all,” says program manager George O’Toole.  “It’s a powerful thing to be able to look someone in the face and say, ‘I’ve been exactly where you are right now. Things can get better.’”

Anchor MORE (Mobile Outreach Recovery Efforts) is Anchor’s new statewide outreach initiative, in which peer recovery specialists go out into the community and talk with individuals in need of services. Interactions often lead to treatment and recovery support services such as 12 step meetings, detox, recovery housing, recovery coaching and Anchor. 

Manager Jonathan Goyer, who has four years of recovery, helped to create the program. “We were considering ways to utilize a harm reduction approach,” said Goyer. We thought, ‘we already provide services to people in the Department of Corrections and in the ER, so we said why not try to intervene before those stages?’”

Having a conversation with someone in the community doesn’t always mean that they come in for services that day. “Our goal is to build that connection so that people know where to turn when they are ready for our services down the line,” said Goyer.

By the numbers:

The nation’s opioid epidemic has hit Rhode Island particularly hard: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, RI had the 5th highest rate of overdose deaths in the U.S  in 2015.

Anchor MORE’s initial data – 11/1/15-10/31/16

5,941 one-on-one conversations in the community

154 new members enrolled at Anchor

1,321 kits of Narcan distributed (accounts for 40% of RI’s total distribution)

Anchor ED: 7/1/2015 – 6/30/2016

905 hospital contacts

805 referrals to treatment

648 Narcan trainings

32.52 minutes- Average time of initial contact to team intervention