Eastern Upper Peninsula Opioid Response Consortium

“The purpose or purposes for which the corporation is formed are: 1. To support the prevention of and treatment for substance use disorders, including opioid use disorder. 2. To educate the public and medical professionals regarding substance use disorders and how to aid in prevention, treatment, and recovery for substance use disorders. 3. To reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with opioid overdoses in high-risk, rural communities by strengthening the capacity of multi- sector consortia to address the prevention, treatment, and recovery to community,county, state, and/or regional levels. To educate the youth in our community regarding conservation of natural resources and to promote good sportsmanship, honesty, responsibility, self-reliance, and fairness.”

“Accomplishments include narcan trainings with local staff, using connections to implement peer recovery services in mackinac county jail, creating relationships to gain quick response team in schoolcraft and luce counties, purchasing chess health to give organizations connections application to make sure that we can connect clients to treatment/services and training local schools in narcan and providing them with narcan emergency boxes. The objective of our project was to educate the public around substance use disorder, minimize stigma and provide resources to residents and organizations in our region. Chess health gives our organizations a great resource as we have limited numbers of peer coaches, residents now have access to 24/7 peer recovery. There are also many issues with providers not knowing all resources and not having a great referral system for getting clients all options available to them. Anyone looking for resources, treatment or providers now has a portal to be able to refer clients. With our project we have given peer services to three county jails, provided numerous trainings and opportunities to consortium members, trained eight schools in narcan and provided them with rescue kits, expanded education to younger age students to reach them at an earlier age, held multiple drug take back days to reduce stigma and educate, and connected members while breaking down silos to share information and resources.”