Diverse group of community leaders gather to tackle crisis

HAZLETON (AP) — People filtered into the meeting room at Carbon Monroe Pike Drug and Alcohol Commission’s Lehighton office on a sunny Tuesday morning.

They’re from many different backgrounds — law enforcement, local agencies, elected officials — but they have a common goal: eliminating overdose deaths in Carbon County.

They are members of the Carbon County Opioid Task Force, who meet once a month to work on initiatives to combat the opioid epidemic.

“We have a pretty good representation here on a regular basis,” said Chris Sorrentino, a case management supervisor for CMP Drug and Alcohol.

Those varied voices allows the task force to get a broad perspective from the community, he said, and to help them understand the impact the opioid epidemic has had on the community and figure out how to deal with the problem.

“It’s a working task force,” Sorrentino said. “It’s not just sitting around. It’s not the same talking points over and over again, because nothing gets accomplished that way.”

Each month, the task force meets, learns what the drug and alcohol commission is working on and upcoming events, and then breaks into groups that work on compiling data, recovery issues, education, overcoming the stigma of addiction and more.

“Each committee talks about what their goals are, their short-range goals they’d like to accomplish in a month, and build on those month to month,” Sorrentino said.

By tackling short-term goals each month, they’re building toward more long-range goals and can see their progress looking back, he said.

“We get a good number of committed people here consistently,” Sorrentino said. “They seem very invested in what they’re trying to do here.”

The task force had been meeting for several years but hit its stride when it linked up with the University of Pittsburgh Technical Assistance Center a year ago in March, he said.

Jamie Drake, executive director of CMP Drug and Alcohol, said she learned about the Pitt program at a statewide meeting for county directors of Single County Authorities.

“They offered this assistance for free,” Sorrentino said. “We talked to them, found out what they could do for us and it sounded like a great match.”

They surveyed task force members and gathered information from the coroner’s office and on the amount of prescription opioids that were being prescribed in the county, which does not include the illicit drugs on the street, he said.

Based on the data and information from members, they helped the task force compile a plan of action, focusing on four or five goals that they identified, Sorrentino said. The task force then tweaked and prioritized those goals, he said.

The task force completed the strategic plan last summer, Drake said, and it has helped bring the stakeholders and community members together to work on the initiatives.

“Our vision statement was to eliminate opioid deaths in Carbon County,” Sorrentino said. “We know that’s lofty, but why not go for lofty? We’re trying to figure out a way to educate more people about the severity of the problem and educate people on how they may get help.”

For instance, they’ve provided Lehighton Ambulance with information packets about how to get treatment to give to an individual who just overdosed or to their family members. Most people who just overdosed don’t want to talk about treatment, but some do, Sorrentino said.

“We’d had people call us, maybe not the same day that they had an overdose, but maybe a day or two later, that it was a wake-up call and maybe I need help,” he said.

The task force coordinated a Drug Take Back Day recently and collected more than 150 pounds of unwanted prescription medicines in a few hours, Drake said.

Many people said they didn’t know what to do with the drugs, and one grandmother said she wanted the prescriptions out of the house before her grandchildren visited this summer, a member said.

The task force also created a report card to the public to educate the people on the epidemic, which includes overdose statistics, Drake said, and a community education flier about the overdose drug, naloxone, is being printed to be inserted in a local newspaper. Members are also working on anti-stigma initiatives, she said.

“Stigma is one of the biggest things you have to battle against,” Sorrentino said. “Breaking down stigma is difficult. We see that stigma in the general community at large. We see that stigma with people who are first responders. We see some of that with the medical professionals that work with them in the hospitals.”

People need to accept that addiction is a disease, not unlike Type 2 diabetes or heart disease, and not a moral failing, he said.

Breaking down the stigma hopefully will result in more people willing to help those with addiction and also bring more individuals into recovery, because they are more willing to seek help without fear of being judged, Sorrentino said.

“A lot of activities we look at is just trying to educate people about what this disease is and how it impacts people, but also letting them see how people have recovered,” he said.

Seeing people in recovery and doing better also breaks down the stigma, because you’re seeing who that person really is, Sorrentino said.

“You’re not seeing the individual that is being crushed by the weight of their disease,” he said. “They’re better and you can really see who they are.”