AHP assisted in the successful delivery of the session for the 2023 COSSAP National Forum: From the Community to Jail and Back Again: Closing the Gaps.
Presenters:
Edmond Hayes, Assistant Superintendent, Director of Opioid Treatment Program, Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, Greenfield, Massachusetts
Rachel Katz, MSN, FNP-BC, Director of Addiction Services, Community Health Center of Franklin County, Greenfield, Massachusetts
Levin Schwartz, MSW, LICSW, Assistant Superintendent, Director of Reentry Services, Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, Greenfield, Massachusetts
Elizabeth Evans, PhD, Professor, University of Massachusetts School of Public Health ad Health Sciences
Jails have become ground zero for the opioid epidemic. Despite this, jails are slow to adopt standards of care for incarcerated patients with opioid use disorder. Funding from a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Medication-assisted Treatment (MAT)-Prescription Drug and Opioid Addiction (PDOA) grant allowed the Franklin County, Massachusetts, Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) to partner with the Community Health Center of Franklin County (CHCFC), a federally qualified health center in the rural county, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences (UMass Amherst) to develop interventions to support continuity of care plans for pretrial detainees who are medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) patients. Jails often cite lack of knowledge of a release date as an insurmountable challenge for providing MOUD treatment to pretrial detainees. The FCSO project team demonstrated its innovative model on how jail and community collaborations can support MOUD patients through the highly vulnerable period of release from custody. Ed Hayes and Levin Schwartz, assistant superintendents at the FCSO, explained how the model was constructed. Rachel Katz, a nurse practitioner from CHCFC, discussed community-based treatment for MOUD patients recently released from incarceration. Elizabeth Evans, PhD, from UMass Amherst presented her evaluation findings related to outcomes and the replicability of the model in other jurisdictions.
Learning Objectives
1. Assess for needs of and develop continuity of care plans for incarcerated MOUD patients as they reenter the community—in particular, for pretrial detainees recently induced on MOUD who have short detention lengths.
2. Implement systems of collaboration between jails and community providers.
3. Establish community supports for MOUD patients who have been recently released from jail.
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