Members of Gov. Tom Wolf’s Cabinet travel to Speers
SPEERS – Pennsylvania is using two newer approaches to getting people with opioid addictions into proven drug treatment programs.
Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine briefly discussed them Friday when she and three other members of Gov. Tom Wolf’s Cabinet held a community event at Mon Valley Career and Technology Center in Speers.
“We know we need to get people linked to treatment,” Levine said.
The newer initiative, the Pennsylvania Coordinated Medication-Assisted Treatment program, was announced in August and provided four $1 million grants to address the opioid epidemic.
It is using health systems, including UPMC and Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh, in a “hubs and spokes model” that uses addiction medicine specialists to find links to treatment through primary care networks, Levine said.
The other program, named Warm Handoff, was designed to create clinical paths from hospital emergency rooms to treatment using drug and alcohol programs. Oftentimes in the past, addicts who were revived from overdoses in emergency rooms were released without any guidance to treatment.
“That’s a problem,” Levine said.
She said the state’s naloxone program is showing success in reviving people experiencing opioid overdoses, as state police used the antidote to save 6,700 lives last year.
“You can’t access help if you are dead,” Levine said.
She said Pennsylvania also is working to reduce the number of opioids that are being prescribed to treat pain.
Nearly 125 people attended the Cabinet in your Community meeting.
“The exceptional discussion and positive energy that has resulted from hosting these events has been remarkable,” Wolf stated in a news release.
“It’s important that my administration continues to engage with communities across the commonwealth so that everyone has an opportunity to feel connected to Harrisburg no matter where they live.”
The conversations Friday ranged from the drained lake at Ryerson Station State Park in Greene County to the Monongahela River.
“The river is cleaner now than it ever has been in my lifetime,” Speers Mayor Bill Lee said.