MIDDLEBURG, Fla. – Florida is rolling out a brand new program to assist battle opioid addiction and overdoses titled “CORE,” which stands for “Coordinated Opioid Recovery.”
Officials with the state well being division stated the program is supposed to “expand every aspect of overdose response and treats all primary and secondary impacts of substance use disorder.”
The first part of the program’s rollout contains operations in Clay County in addition to Brevard, Escambia, Gulf, Marion, Pasco, and Volusia counties. The second part will add Citrus, Duval, Flagler, Manatee, and Pinellas counties to the record.
The pilot program assembles agencies just like the state’s Department of Children and Families, the Department of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Administration and particular person county governments to comprehensively handle all the problems that lead to and are available from substance use dysfunction, not simply overdose response.
“You’ll notice, we all keep speaking about this as a disease because it is a disease, and with advanced neuroimaging, you can actually see the damage that this does to the brain,” the program’s director, Kenneth Scheppke stated.
The aim of CORE is to present that community of cooperating agencies as a useful resource to handle all facets of substance abuse and overdoses, from housing insecurity to psychological well being points, and even different illnesses linked to drug use like Hepatitis-C.
“We fix this one disease that’s at a nexus of all these other problems, we can cure a lot of problems in our society,” Scheppke stated.
Since 2015, fentanyl-related overdose deaths have elevated by 790% in Florida, in accordance to the state’s well being division. In 2021, greater than 8,000 Floridians died from an opioid overdose. So far this yr, the quantity has surpassed 4,000.
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