|
New Concepts provides
culturally competent and evidence-based treatment and
recovery support services for Substance Use Disorders (SUD).
The million-dollar grant will allow the organization to
provide treatment, manage education and outreach activities
and disperse funds to other collaborators such as Adelante,
UMDAOP Lucas County, and the Toledo Lucas County Health
Department.
A Critical Need:
In 2007 there were two
opioid-related deaths in Lucas County’s black community. In
2017, the number of black deaths attributed to opioids rose
to 32 after only 10 years. And, although the number of
people with SUDs nationally outnumbers those who suffer from
heart disease, cancer, or diabetes, an effective response to
the problem of SUDs has eluded black and brown people
primarily due to the public, institutional and internalized
personal stigma surrounding addiction and treatment.
Historically, blacks and
Hispanics suffering from addiction have been perceived as
being morally-flawed, dangerous or personally irresponsible
and steered directly into the criminal justice system.
Conversely, whites have historically been viewed more
sympathetically under the “disease” model of addiction and
are thus more likely to be compassionately escorted into the
health care system.
Notably, the grant award
was announced to the public on the weekend of MLK Day, which
is profoundly significant.
In a poignant essay in The
New Tri-State Defender titled ‘Day of Service,’ the Rev.
Earle J. Fisher, Ph.D. asserts that the “national day of
service” that has accompanied Dr. Martin Luther King Day
since 1994, has become “a sham.”
Fisher’s rationale?
The typical “service”
activities such as slapping a coat of paint on dilapidated
inner-city buildings or cleaning up trash from broken glass
and debris-strewn vacant lots in communities of color,
subversively blames victims for their conditions by
challenging them to “pray for those in poverty, pick up more
trash.” In other words, “to engage in charitable acts
instead of advocating for justice.”
Because civic leaders and
politicians can easily find the money for
multi-million-dollar projects downtown but can seldom find
funds to improve black lives, “Calls for service, in an
inequitable environment, are concoctions of deception and
disrespectful to Dr. King’s transcendent legacy,” Fisher
maintains.
Contrarily, the grant
awarded to New Concepts “provides a significant opportunity
to improve our efforts to address the treatment needs of
African Americans, Latino and other minority populations,”
says Scott Sylak, MHRSB’s executive director. “We hope that
the intentionality of our efforts will positively impact
treatment success rates while reducing the number of deaths
related to an opioid-related overdose.”
The award, then, in the
spirit of MLK, is a tribute to the bold and courageous
effort of Sylak to create a behavioral health system in
Lucas County that is a model for diversity, inclusion, and
health equity throughout the state of Ohio.
Also, in the spirit of
King, the successful grant is a testament to the
extraordinary vision of Bishop Duane C. Tisdale, when he
created New Concepts in 1994 as a tangible faith-based
response to the destruction of black lives from the crack
epidemic.
The persistence of Janice
Edwards, the staff of New Concepts, and John Edwards of
UMADAOP also finally paid off as the public response to
addiction begins to accept contemporary approaches such as
alternatives to incarceration instead of continuing the
criminalization of addiction.
It is the efforts of these
individuals who, in the true spirit of MLK, were able to
challenge racial and institutional stigmas to change how we
think about and treat addiction in communities of color.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org |
