Local clinic receives grant to provide post-incarceration opioid treatment
30th May 2023 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
A local clinic was one of 15 organizations nationwide to receive a grant to combat the country’s opioid crisis from the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts, with a particular focus on providing addiction treatment to previously incarcerated people.
The Formerly Incarcerated Transitions Clinic (FIT Clinic) Program, which is based in the Crescent City, was allotted nearly $150,000 in grant funding from FORE to provide harm-reduction education and substance-abuse treatment for individuals in New Orleans involved in the criminal justice system.
FORE announced its 2023 grant recipients in March, with a total of roughly $2.2 million in funding being distributed by the organization. According to a FORE press release, the recipient organizations will use the funding “to support programs, build capacity, bolster staffing, address technology issues and establish strategic partnerships to help community-based organizations strengthen the delivery of opioid use disorder services in their communities.”
Dr. Karen Scott, the president of FORE noted how opioid-related deaths continue to skyrocket – according to a 2022 report by the Centers for Disease Control, opioid overdose fatalities increased by more than 30 percent from 2019 to 2020 – which underscores the need to provide support and care for opioid addicts or abusers.
She said the organizations that received the FORE grants are the type of community entities that can provide such needed support and at a person-to-person, hands-on level.
“We really wanted to hear from organizations what they needed to do the good work they’re doing for people in high-risk situations,” Scott said. “We’ve always tried to draw more attention to not only the opioid crisis, but also to people with the highest risk of dying.”
Scott added that during the COVID pandemic that started in early 2020, attention was drawn away from opioid addiction and overdoses, but now that the country has largely gotten through the worst of the pandemic, the need to focus time and energy battling opioid use remains high.
“There wasn’t as much attention being paid to opioid use,” she said. “But now that we’ve come out of that COVID phase, I think it brings back up to the top just how much of a problem we have with opioid use.”
Scott noted that minority communities, including Black or Latino, are often disproportionately affected by the negative impacts of opioid use, with a lack of access to resources that could help them work through their addiction issues.
Scott said that the FITC program in New Orleans received one of the FORE grants because of the organization’s focus on helping opioid users within the criminal justice system, and especially those convicts and other prisoners who have recently left incarceration.
She noted that studies strongly show that people just coming out of jail or prison are up to 40 percent more likely to overdose from opioids. Because the criminal justice system itself affects people of color disproportionately, such after-release care for Black and Latino people is heightened.
FIT Clinic Program Founder and Director Dr. Anjali Niyogi, said she and the rest of the FITC team, as well as the people it helps, are thrilled for the FORE funding because it will help some of the most vulnerable members of the community.
Niyogi, who is also an assistant professor at the Tulane Medical Center, said the clinic “strives to achieve health equity for individuals impacted by mass incarceration.” She said people reentering society from incarceration are sicker and more health-comprised from a variety of chronic maladies than the general population.
She added that life expectancy for incarcerated people is only 55 years, much less than the overall average of 75. Niyogi said recently released prisoners face a death rate one to two weeks after release that’s 12 times higher than normal.
Faced with a number of challenges, including barriers to health care and lack of insurance, which can put formerly incarcerated people particularly at risk of health calamities, a fact that’s compounded by race and ethnic background.
“Even if insured, internalized racism, trauma and stigma often deter people from accessing health services,” she said. “Criminal records create additional barriers that affect the social determinants of health, like housing, employment and social support.”
Niyogi said the FIT Clinic Program strives to provide the type of crucial assistance often needed by the recently released. The program’s case workers and counselors often have their own experiences with the criminal justice system.
“The FIT Clinic program connects people released from incarceration with community health resources, including medical, mental health and substance use services,” she said. “The strength and success of our program stems from our community health workers who themselves have histories of incarceration. This shared history with clients is essential in building trust and engagement with health centers.”
She also noted that the clinic sponsors peer-to-peer support groups and networking “that creates social networks to address and mitigate the long-lasting psychological and emotional impacts of incarceration.”
With opioids in particular in this case, Niyogi said recently released individuals are especially vulnerable to opioid use and overdoses, often due to a decreased tolerance for the drugs or lack of awareness about opioid addiction and new risks like fentanyl, both of which result from being isolated from society for many years.
Darrell Miles, who was released from incarceration in October 2021 and has been served by the FIT Clinic regularly since then, said opioid addiction remains at crisis levels in prisons. Miles added that many incarcerated opioid users who are released lack the access to the care they need to break their addictions.
“[Opioid use] is a huge problem in prison,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how many people die, it’s still prevalent. Guys who are released with those addictions might not get treatment without the FIT Clinic.”
Miles believes the grant will help the clinic to provide such crucial post-release attention. In general, he added, the FIT Clinic offers holistic, comprehensive assessment and treatment for people from the moment they are released; he said that without something like the clinic, recently released prisoners might have to wait months and jump through many bureaucratic hoops before they receive the complete treatment they need.
Miles added that many prisoners receive only cursory medical treatment while incarcerated, with only health crises receiving attention. He said chronic or underlying conditions might go ignored or undiagnosed. “A lot of prisoners don’t know they have serious illnesses,” he said. “They didn’t get diagnosed, so they’re not aware of illnesses they have, like diabetes. Unless you go into a diabetic coma, they don’t get treated.”
Overall, Miles said he and other recently released prisoners owe their health and often their lives to the comprehensive, personal, immediate care offered by FIT Clinic. “It’s like a fresh breath of air,” he said.
Niyogi said the FORE assistance will be key to the continuation and expansion of the FITC program.
“We are thrilled to be one of the recipients of the FORE grant,” she said. “We know that opioid use and overdoses, like mass incarceration, are major public health crises. Our hope is to reduce the number of overdose deaths within this high-risk population.”
This article originally published in the May 29, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
