What an eventful Recovery Month! Our partners had over 30 events during the month of September! Live Tampa Bay participated in many events throughout the Tampa Bay region and in the state. We were even invited to be one of 500 national participants for Mobilize Recovery in Washington DC, where we cheered on our Leadership Coalition Member, Sean Daniels (Florida Studio Theatre), during his presentation. After a day of reflecting on a month jam-packed with events, here’s what I want most for our region:
1. Actual brick-and-mortar hubs or recovery community centers in our most vulnerable communities, where people can go to receive a wide array of recovery, harm reduction, and case management services.
2. Shared measurement that is not a simple measure of heads-on-beds or seats-in-seats. We don’t get bed tax from behavioral health services!
3. More robust recovery services—including housing and transportation—throughout the region, along with a more flexible financing model that supports individuals and their needs as they strive to get firm footing in recovery.
4. Attorneys, artists, and activists to hold bad actors accountable and to fuel a true recovery movement. Think of the the AIDS Movement in the 1980s.
5. A thoughtful approach to disseminating opioid settlement dollars that understands that this money is “blood money,” not programmatic dollars. (I got this line from the Kirk Lane, Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership). See the simple but remarkable plan in cities and counties of Arkansas by clicking here.
But what I want most for our region is a reduction in the still staggering number of deaths from overdose. In short, I want far fewer people to die and far more people to make it into recovery, so they can celebrate this month with others trudging the road of happy destiny.
Yours in recovery,
Jennifer Webb
