Addiction Stabilization Units are specialized care centers staffed by medical professionals and social workers who provide comprehensive care to patients experiencing an opioid overdose. This care includes both medical treatment to manage cravings and withdrawals, and connection with longer-term treatment and social services such as housing. Here are three new centers opening across the country:
- Portland, Oregon, Will Provide People In Recovery With Transitional Housing and Services. Multnomah County announced plans for a 70-bed treatment center and transitional housing for people in recovery from substance use disorders. Mary-Rain O’Meara, director of community development at Central City Concern which will run the center says, “Step-down from detox — transitional housing and recovery services — are a critical link to help people stabilize on the path to health and well-being. And it’s missing.” The facility will help fill a gap in Portland’s continuum of substance use services who need housing and longer-term support. A lack of step-down services forces Central City Concern’s current stabilization center to send one-third of the 3,000 people it serves back to the streets after they leave detox.
- Baltimore Plans To Build a Center For Those Who Are Pregnant And In Opioid Withdrawal. For The Baltimore Sun, Angela Roberts reports on a new residential crisis stabilization center focused on the intersection between addiction and pregnancy. The facility will have 30 beds for teens, 20 beds for adults, and 40 stabilization beds for people experiencing acute emergencies. The center will also “offer outpatient therapy and mental health treatment, medication-assisted substance-use disorder therapy and walk-in medical care for non-emergency illnesses and injuries to members of the surrounding community.”
Local NBC affiliate WBAL’s Breana Ross reports that providing services like these can also reduce jail populations. As Ivan Bates, the top prosecutor for Baltimore City recently told Ross:
“This is the type of program that, eventually, we would like to sit and talk and work with the police to say, ‘Hey, we don’t even want to bring them to jail. We can bring them to you at the center like this immediately… This way, they can deal with the detox and any of the other issues individuals will have. So, that way, they are not about being incarcerated. It’s about being directed immediately to the services they need to change their life.”
- Wisconsin Opens “Center [That] Provides Medication-Assisted Treatment.” For Waukesha County’s The Freeman, Bridget Dean reports that government and community leaders joined the Waukesha County Business Alliance in opening the fifth Community Medical Services clinic in Pewaukee to provide critical, urgent care to people with opioid use disorder. The center will offer patients who cannot wait for care and who need ongoing support with outpatient medication-assisted treatment, necessary same-day walk-in treatment, and counseling in a welcoming environment. Waukesha County executive Paul Farrow told the outlet, “This is just another piece of the puzzle … Last week we opened our community crisis stabilization center, the other half of our mental health hospital. Another piece of the puzzle we need.”