SNOW HILL – The Worcester County Health Department has received a three-year federal grant that will fund a Rural Health Opioid program.
The agency will receive $250,000 annually over the course of three years from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to support ongoing coordination and response efforts to the opioid epidemic.
While the health department has worked with HRSA in the past, Project Director Jesse Jarman said this will be the first time the county agency has received this grant.
“We were actually one of 12 in the nation to receive the grant,” he said. “It’s pretty competitive.”
Jarman explained the grant will augment practices and programs currently in place in Worcester County to address the opioid epidemic.
“It’s developed to enhance what we’ve already been working on,” he said.
For example, the health department has already implemented naloxone training classing, a “Decisions Matter” campaign and an initiative that places a person in the emergency room to triage people who have overdosed and help them access care afterwards.
The grant, however, will further support the health department’s efforts to reduce opioid use and deaths, utilize outreach strategies that will encourage individuals to seek treatment, and implement public awareness campaigns on addiction.
Jarman said the health department plans to hire additional peer specialists versed in addiction to reach out to residents facing addiction and link them to treatment programs.
While the behavioral health program is similar to Wicomico County’s Community Outreach Addictions Team (C.O.A.T.) program, Christina Purcell, the health department’s behavioral health program manager, said Worcester County deals with a more rural population.
“The Worcester County Health Department has had peer recovery specialists in our Behavioral Health Program for several years,” she said. “With the HRSA grant we were able to use these funds to enhance our current peer recovery specialists. We are familiar with the approach being used in Wicomico County and we are similar in that our staff are mobile and we are working in partnership with our local law enforcement and hospital.”
With grant funding from HRSA, the Worcester County Health Department can improve health care to people who are geographically isolated or economically and medically vulnerable.
According to the health department, the availability of services and providers, along with the cost of treatment, funding issues and transportation issues, make addressing public health issues, such as the opioid epidemic, in rural areas more challenging.
Jarman expressed his enthusiasm for new opportunities the grant has provided the health department.
“We are very happy to get some funding to work on this issue in our community and to keep doing what we do in trying to promote the health of our community,” he said.
Health Officer Rebecca Jones said the grant will allow the health department to better serve the community.
“This was a nationally competitive grant funding opportunity that will help the Worcester County Health Department create a mobile addictions response team,” she wrote. “It will also help us better link individuals with opioid addictions to treatment, to raise community awareness and to support individuals in recovery.”
