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The Addiction Policy Forum and their partners have just launched a new project featuring innovative programs to address addiction in the fields of prevention, treatment, recovery support, overdose reversal, criminal justice reform and law enforcement strategies. They invite you to nominate programs your organization believes are innovative in these fields. Selected programs will receive national recognition via digital and print media. Submissions will be reviewed on a rolling basis until March 31st, 2017.

Read more about this initiative. Nominate a program.

In the Army, Richard Ress survived duty in some of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, but on a July day in 2009, he seemed ready for his life to end in the back of a Texas police car facing his third drunken-driving arrest in less than a year. According to the arrest report, Ress asked the officer “to shoot him and get it over with.” He was struggling with flashbacks and nightmares associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, which went untreated during four months in jail. A few years later, in 2015, he got a fourth DWI.

That’s when Ress was flagged for a program that aims to divert certain veterans facing criminal charges into treatment programs instead of sending them through the criminal court system. And rather than requiring veterans to travel to court appearances, this court travels to reach them in five counties near Dallas.

Judge John Roach Jr. said the court is a first of its kind, and he hopes it will be replicated in other rural areas without public transportation, where getting to hearings can be a challenge. “This is not an easy program. I expect a lot, and I expect commitment. But getting to court, having access to the services, that shouldn’t be the issue that prevents a veteran in one county from getting treatment available to a veteran in another county,” Roach said.

The three-phase program requires substance-abuse treatment, regular drug and alcohol testing, intensive therapy, mentoring and community service. If veterans graduate, their criminal charges are dismissed and their arrest records destroyed. 

As of mid-December, 52 veterans were enrolled, but that number can fluctuate. On one December morning at the Kaufman County Courthouse, the judge removed one man from the program for lying about his drug use and enrolled another who showed up asking for help.

Read more on DaytonDailyNews.com.

For most of us, “unemployment” conjures up images of worry, stress and lack of clarity. A new study conducted by epidemiologist and Associate Professor Silvia Martins, M.D., Ph.D., of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health connects the dots between employment status and nonmedical use of prescription opioids and stimulants. This research shows how social characteristics such as employment status influence substance misuse. The study, which is among the first to look at this relationship, sampled 58,486 adults, aged 25 years and older. Data originated from the 2011 to 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. 

The study indicates that, “People who were unemployed reported the highest odds of misusing prescription opioids at 7 percent. Those out of the workforce reported the highest odds of misusing prescription stimulants at 2 percent. Overall, there were more users of nonmedical prescription opioids (3.5 percent) compared with nonmedical users of prescription stimulants (0.72 percent),” affirms Martin. 

“Our results confirm the need for adult prevention and deterrence programs that target nonmedical prescription drug use, especially among those unemployed or not in the workforce,” says Martins. “Of particular concern are adults ages 26-34 who are unemployed, since the odds of nonmedical prescription opioid use are higher in this age group as compared to older adults.” 

Read more on CADCA.org. Read the abstract of the study.

According to data from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP), people living with HIV who are temporarily or unstably housed have lower rates of retention in care and viral suppression. A new $3.6 million, three-year investment of resources from the Secretary’s Minority AIDS Initiative Fund (SMAIF) is supporting five communities in the implementation, utilization, and evaluation of integrated housing and HIV care data systems to enhance patient navigation and service coordination and improve health outcomes along the HIV care continuum.

The initiative, Addressing HIV Care and Housing Coordination Through Data Integration to Improve Health Outcomes along the HIV Care Continuum, is being led by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) HIV/AIDS Bureau’s (HAB) Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Program, in collaboration with the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office of HIV/AIDS Housing (OHH). HAB administers the RWHAP and OHH administers the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program.

The goal of the initiative is to improve health outcomes for persons living with HIV by enhancing the ability of RWHAP recipients and HOPWA providers to integrate data systems in order to share client information and coordinate HIV care and housing services across multiple funding programs.

Read more on AIDS.gov.

People with a history of incarceration are typically much sicker than the general population, especially returning inmates like Horn. Studies performed primarily in Ohio and Texas have found that more than 8 in 10 returning prisoners have a chronic medical condition, from addiction to asthma. Dr. Reggie Egins says a lot of it has gone untreated, for a range of reasons — because the health care system is tough to navigate, because they’re homeless and don’t have insurance, or because they don’t trust doctors.

“The first thing is that they usually have no permanent address, which means that they cannot apply for health insurance and/or there’s nowhere to receive those documents if they do,” says Egins, a family doctor who does correctional health care, splitting each week between serving patients at the D.C. jail and at Unity Health Care, a network of community health centers.

Now, being in jail is not healthy. But for a lot of people, the best health care they’ll receive is what they get behind bars. About 40 percent of inmates are newly diagnosed with a chronic medical condition while incarcerated. Outside, many only interact with doctors when they’re in the emergency room.

Dr. Emily Wang, a primary care doctor with the Yale University School of Medicine, and her colleagues are trying to make it easier for ex-inmates to manage their health care so they don’t end up in the ER. They work at the Transitions Clinic Network, which now has 14 sites across the U.S. and in Puerto Rico. They’re funded by private donations and by grants like one from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation.

Their patients qualify for Medicaid based on income, and the clinics are reimbursed by Medicaid. The difference is that they offer more services than Medicaid typically does — like helping patients find a halfway house they can afford.

Read more on NPR.org.

Sports psychologist Angel Brutus noticed one of her student-athlete clients motioning for her to come over during a post-practice team huddle. The team had just concluded a great practice, during which the athlete, dominant and focused, received praises for performance from teammates.

But upon reaching the athlete, Brutus immediately recognized there was a problem. “The athlete was having a panic attack,” Brutus explained. “They had arousal levels so high that, from the coach’s perspective, they were on point. But because the athlete and I had been working with each other and they understood my role with the team, they were able to pull me to the side. They couldn’t talk. I had to intervene in getting their arousal levels low enough so they can articulate what was going on with them.”

This is only one example of the countless situations Brutus and other health professionals have encountered while working with student-athletes. In a two-day session at the Black Student-Athlete Summit in Austin, Texas, a number of health professionals educated and engaged attendees in discussions focusing largely on the mental health and well-being of student-athletes.

In 2014, a survey conducted by the American College Health Association found that about 30 percent of the 195,000 respondents reported feeling depressed in 12 months, and 50 percent reported feeling overwhelming anxiety during the same period. There was also a correlation between anxiety and depression, and poor athletic performance, low grades, substance abuse and suicide.

A nine-year analysis of the NCAA resolutions database showed that suicide was the third-leading cause of death among college-age individuals and the second-leading cause of death among college students.

Caroline Brackette, an associate professor of counseling at Mercer University who works closely with student-athletes, found that one of the issues that might deter college athletes from seeking help is the lack of willingness to express themselves, which may stem from the idea that seeking help and dealing with mental health issues are taboo, especially in the black community. Brackette believes one way for counseling and therapy to become the norm is if people, especially student-athletes, view mental health the same way they view their physical health.

Read more on TheUndefeated.com.