Coming Soon: Money For Three Addiction Research Centers

The National Institute of Health yesterday announced what sounds like a major new push to attack the opiate epidemic at the community level.

A big part of what it’s calling its HEALing Communities initiative will be to try to integrate prevention and treatment efforts for addicts while strengthening communities.

There’s more than that, though.

Two years ago, I wrote about the potential for economic development to the Ohio River Valley region that I thought could come from the region positioning itself as a center for addiction research. Northern Kentucky University, and their provost, Sue Ott Rowlands, picked up on that idea, I’m honored to say, and the Ohio River Valley Research Consortium was formed.

It now appears that within the NIH push is what is described to me as “a lot” of money (though how much is as yet unknown) to establish three research centers around the country. Here are the guidelines for applying for that money.

Sounds like it might be a good moment for folks in the tri-state Ohio River Valley, so badly hit by the epidemic and deindustrialization, to marshal some forces and look to the future of what such a center can mean for research, dollars, and attracting PhDs to the area — and what all that might mean, in turn, for regional economic development.

They might also consider, as I wrote two years ago, what such a center could mean for all those recovering addicts now studying to be drug counselors and social workers, who might be hired to help in the studies such a center would fund.

After so many years of negative behavior, many I’ve met are now eager to be part of something positive and something bigger than themselves. Harnessing them could mean a massive infusion of new energy to a region that’s lost a lot of it.

1 Comment

Filed under Drugs, The Heroin Heartland

One Response to Coming Soon: Money For Three Addiction Research Centers

  1. Great concept: Recovery as economic development! Addiction Recovery Care operates in Ky and has seen tremendous success in leveraging recovery into economic development for the communities we are in, and, most importantly, for our clients. We’ve grown from a one person volunteer mission into a company employing ~500 people in 10 years. Roughly half are in recovery and nearly a third are grads of our programs. Recovery means jobs!

    https://www.thelevisalazer.com/2018/11/08/from-crisis-to-career-kayla-sargent-perkins-story/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *