A planned addiction recovery center for women moved a step closer to reality Wednesday, as Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) officials announced more than $1 million in grant funding for the project.
ARC Federal Co-Chair Tim Thomas, along with local, state and Ohio University officials, announced the grant funding in a Wednesday morning meeting on OU’s Athens campus. Officials say the $1,100,000 in grant funding will help to repurpose the former Hocking Correctional Facility near Nelsonville into a hub for treatment and rehabilitation.
Thomas said fighting the opioid epidemic, which claims the lives of thousands of Appalachians and Ohioans each year, is the ARC’s highest priority.
“This is an all-hands-on-deck situation,” Thomas said.
A host of local institutions and organizations — including OU, Hopewell Health Centers and many other public and private entities — are involved with the project.
In addition to the $1,100,000 grant from the ARC, some of those entities have pledged match commitments to the project.
OU has committed $205,248, according to the media release. Other entities — including the Perry County Municipal Court, the Hocking County Municipal Court, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and the 317 Board — have also committed funding.
The grant funding goes beyond the physical building near Nelsonville. Tracy Plouck, the population health executive in residence for OU’s College of Health Science and Professions, said some program will begin this summer, including training community health workers, offering art and music therapy, and addiction treatment in the area.
“We’re bringing different kinds of resources from across the community to bear across a single network,” Plouck siad about the new facility and network, now called the Appalachian Recovery Project.
STAR Community Justice Center will provide residential addiction treatment for women who are leaving jail or enrolled in a certified drug court, according to the release. Various health agencies will provide primary care and outpatient treatment, and community health worker interns will work with women at the facility.
Vocational training from Hocking College will also be available, Plouck said.
Those involved with the Appalachian Recovery Project hope it won’t just help to treat addiction in an area devastated by opioids, but that it will also foster job growth in the region. Thirty-one jobs will be created through Hopewell Health Center and STAR, according to the release.
“At the end of the day, Appalachia’s No. 1 resource is its people,” Thomas said. “We need people participating in the economy, participating in society.”
The ARC grant is part of the POWER initiative to help communities impacted by the decline of coal. Thomas said there seems to be a correlation in economic distress and substance abuse.
The grant specifically funds the treatment side of the Appalachian Recovery Project, which is being spearheaded by the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health. The facility will also feature a jail on its second floor in addition to inpatient and outpatient treatment facilities.
According to an Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health and Ohio University timeline, programming will begin this July, but the former prison won’t be fully repurposed until around next spring. Implementation will be a gradual process, Plouck said.
“What we’ll end up with is hundreds of women who at some point will have left addiction behind,” College of Health Science and Professions Dean Randy Leite said. “Their children will benefit, their other family members will benefit, their future employers will benefit.”
