Adeola Adeyemo
When individuals are challenged with quitting a difficult habit such as drug addiction, one resource they often turn to for help is religion. The Baltimore City Health Department has observed this and is revving up its fight against the opioid epidemic by leveraging on its partnerships with faith-based organizations to help victims across the city.
At a gathering of over 100 faith-based outreach leaders, community leaders, frontline health workers, ministers, police chaplains and pastors last Saturday at the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Baltimore, officials of the city’s health department facilitated a training session on opioid addiction, trauma informed approach and resiliency.
“We recognized that faith tends to be a very strong influence in the lives of not just Baltimore city residents but people,” said Rev. Kimberly Lagree, Program coordinator, Office of Youth and Trauma Services at the training session tagged ‘Pathway Toward Healing Our City’. “It’s a mental health and it’s a public health approach that we need to reduce violence in our city as well as address the opioid epidemic.”
With 692 opioid related deaths in Baltimore recorded in 2017, the Baltimore City Health Department is tackling the opioid epidemic with a three-pronged strategy that involves reducing the stigma of addiction, promoting substance use disorder treatment, and educating the public to recognize and respond to an overdose with the opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone. This figure, which is more than double the number of people who died of homicide, puts Baltimore at the highest overdose fatality rate of any city in the United States.
Meanwhile, overall number of opioid-related deaths in Maryland surged 9.7 percent through the third quarter of 2018 killing 1,648 people from January to September. According to data released by the Maryland Department of Health, 1,502 people were killed during the same period in 2017.
“We are in a state of emergency not only in this city, but in the state of Maryland as well as throughout the country,” said William Kellibrew, Director of Office of Youth & Trauma Services. According to him, an increasing number of young people in Baltimore are becoming unintended victims of the opioid epidemic. Through the Family Resilience Project, the Baltimore City Health Department is focusing on providing services and alternative therapies to help them cope and get access to treatment.
“We have many people who are experiencing non-fatality overdoses who are returning back to their homes; but there are kids in those homes, young people in those homes who are very much impacted,” he said.
The rising numbers in the city’s opioid related cases have spurred the creation of resource platforms such as the Don’t Die Campaign which is a hub that provides resources, training videos and references for the opioid crisis. The city also has a Staying Alive program which trains individuals on administering naloxone and dealing with overdose. When administered to an individual experiencing an overdose, this antidote medication can take them from near death to walking and talking in a matter of minutes. Lizeth Hester, senior advisor to the Director of Trauma Services during her presentation on opioids mentioned that the Baltimore City Health Department has trained 51, 617 individuals on naloxone administration, conducted 6,238 training events and distributed 45,981 kits. These efforts have resulted in the reversal of 3,478 overdoses throughout Baltimore city.
Working on the frontlines of the opioid crisis, however, presents a fresh set of challenges for the faith-based leaders and health workers who are often confronted with their own trauma as they try to provide succor to others. The training provided a judgement-free zone for them to share their concerns and help each other through their individual journeys.
As a pastor and a public health worker, Lagree said one of the best ways of helping victims of any kind of trauma such as opioid addiction is to connect with them on a personal level.
“The first thing is understanding healing is possible,” she said. “We’ve all had struggles. One of the challenges that I’ve noticed even in my own past is really accepting the fact that my conversations are also sermons in the lives of people, that my actions can preach a better service than my lips can. We must do our due diligence and commit ourselves to really getting to know the people that we serve and sharing our own stories.”
