North Carolina

Wilson County is working to address structural and systems-level barriers to improve rural residents' access to quality, integrated SUD and behavioral health care services that are evidence-based and trauma-informed. We will do this by addressing social determinants of health and targeting root causes and risk factors that contribute to SUD and other behavioral health care disorders, including Adverse Childhood Experiences. Our collaborative approach embraces a System of Care model.

Project PAGE (Psychostimulant Activities Guiding Education) provides the opportunity to leverage partnerships and learnings from NOVEL, as well as expand outreach and substance use focus across multiple counties. The project will focus its prevention efforts on increasing provider and community knowledge of psychostimulant misuse and use disorders and the dangers of stigma, as well as increasing screening efforts for individuals at risk for, or who have, psychostimulant use disorders.

Through the RCORP-Psychostimulant Support Program, the existing Wilkes Opioid Response Program consortium, serving now within COPE (Community Opioid Prevention and Education), will address social and environmental determinants within our community that have driven the prevalence of psychostimulant use/misuse disorder and its impacts on the community of Wilkes County, North Carolina to a staggering degree.

Bailey-Warren NOVEL will focus its prevention efforts on increasing community knowledge and awareness of OUD and the dangers of stigma, with particular focus on the faith-based communities; expanding naloxone distribution and training; increasing awareness and the number of drug take-back sites and drug disposal kits; expanding current school-based and community-based programs; and implementing an SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral to Treatment) training initiative.

A multi-sector Consortium seeks to expand its capacity and impact in our communities through implementing the Cleveland and Lincoln Counties Rural Communities Opioid Response Consortium (CLRC-ORC). A continuum of services and a network infrastructure and expansion approach is needed to improve education, prevention, access to treatment, understanding of treatment and to reduce the stigma of SUD/OUD so at risk and current SUD/OUD neighbors can receive the help needed.

Bladen County and the Bladen County Consolidated Health & Human Services Department has been awarded funds from the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) to reduce morbidity and mortality resulting from substance use disorder, including opioid use disorder, by strengthening and expanding the capacity to provide prevention, treatment, and recovery services. Prevention Core Activities • Increase access to naloxone and training. • Increase the number of drug take-back programs.

Western North Carolina (WNC) has been hard-hit by increasing numbers of persons with psychostimulant use disorder (PSUD). Chronic poverty and a recent surge in the availability of inexpensive street drugs and polysubstance use have caused an increasing number of overdose-related emergencies and deaths. The three counties targeted in this project—Cherokee, Clay, and Graham—continue to experience extremely high social, health, and economic burdens as a result of Substance Use Disorder (SUD) and PSUD.

The goal of the proposed Robeson County RCORP-Psychostimulant project is to reduce the incidence and impact of Psychostimulants in rural communities by improving systems of care, family supports, and addressing social determinants of health, the proactive, Robeson Rural Communities Consortium, proposes to strengthen and develop meaningful, measurable, relevant, and culturally responsive strategies for prevention and treatment/recovery, in an extraordinarily diverse and broad rural service area with a significant history of disparities and marginalized populations, SUD, and co-occurring diso