Almost five years ago, former North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Robin Hayes started an organization, Bridge to 100, with a vision of reaching all 100 counties in the state with faith-based addiction treatment centers. This has been shown to be a success, as over 30 organizations are now cooperating towards his mission and the state has now placed Hayes in the middle of key conversations on addiction treatment in the state.
Hayes told CJ that after his time in politics, he said, “God what do you want me to do with this time. And he said to me, you need to go work on this. Use your contacts and your knowledge of the system to help people that are helping folks to get into recovery.” So Hayes’ started Bridge to 100 to help existing organizations to do their jobs better, with the aim of making free or low-cost faith-based addiction treatment available in all parts of the state.
When now-Gov. Josh Stein was attorney general, the state reached a settlement with pharmaceutical companies, which brought in over $4 billion to the state, to be spent on addressing the opioid crisis. The money was split, with 85% of it to be allocated by counties and the remaining 15% to be allocated by the state.
Hayes told CJ that he worked with Steve Mange, the man Stein appointed to oversee the process, to ensure that abstinence and faith-based treatment organizations would be eligible to receive these funds too. The preferred treatment path by state DHHS and the behavioral health community seems to be medication-assisted treatment (often called MAT), part of the wider “Harm Reduction” approach. MAT involves giving a stable dose of prescription opioids to opioid addicts so their lives are not in constant turmoil from looking for the drugs and to avoid higher risk of overdose from inconsistent street sources of the drug or from dirty needles.
Many in the recovery community, however, believe more focus should be put on getting addicts away entirely from drugs and refocusing their lives on a broader, more-positive life vision — including religious faith. Alcoholics Anonymous, an abstinence-focused program that requires surrendering to a higher power, and its “12-step” offshoots, for example, are among the longest-running and most-successful approaches to addiction. Bridge 100 and many other organizations who use these methods have been fighting for a seat at the table.
Hayes said he didn’t want it to be seen like there was a competition between the MAT or “harm reduction” philosophy on one side and the abstinence and faith-based approaches on the other.
“That’s not our intention whatsoever,” Hayes said. “If you do the harm reduction piece at the right time for the right reason, that gives a person a new lease on life so that you can then expose them to other options on how they can continue and really turn their recovery process into transformation and restoration.”
The North Carolina Collaboratory, which the state legislature created to fund scientific research on the state’s behalf, through the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab at the University of North Carolina School, created a pilot program study, designed by lab director Dr. Gary Nelson, looking at three of Bridge to 100’s affiliated residential, faith-based recovery programs — Ground 40, Hope Center Ministries, and Christian Recovery Centers. The study’s results were very positive on the impact of these programs.
Christian Recovery Centers, Hayes said, “formed a partnership with Southeastern Integrated Care. They are a health care clinical provider of detox, and they use MAT. But because of our partnership, when the person comes in and is detoxed, they are offered a voluntary 30-day introduction into the recovery process. When it started out, 20% tried it; now it’s up to 80%. It’s been a wonderful relationship and has shown particularly DHS that we’re willing to look beyond some of the historical stigmas that have created friction to — and again this is a research finding — combine science and faith to get the best possible outcomes.”
Hayes said that the NC Collaboratory study, released in December, showed that the programs had great success when measuring across 52 areas of social determinants of health.
“They were so impressed that we have gone back to them since then with a much wider expanded project to include four providers and to include a component of leadership and improving the process creating scientific measurements,” said Hayes.
Another person with the state that was impressed was Kelly Crosbie, director of the NC Department of Health and Human Services Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Use Services.
“[Crosbie] has gotten to know us, and she really likes the way we’ve approached it, combining Southeastern Integrated with the abstinence recovery,” Hayes said, leading her to ask him and another associate to be on a panel, which is otherwise fairly full of harm-reduction backers.
The relationship is so good that Crosbie will present at Bridge to 100’s upcoming Sept. 25 meeting. This collaboration may mark the beginning of a new era, where the two camps that had been seen as competitors in a zero-sum game for funding and legitimacy, can start to see each other as partners in offering many options to those seeking help for addiction.
The full report is below: