Quick Response Team (QRT) — Huntington, West Virginia
The Huntington Quick Response Team
The City That Became the National Model
Huntington sits in Cabell County in southwestern West Virginia, a small city in the heart of Appalachia that became one of the epicenters of the American opioid crisis. The overdose death rate was among the highest in the country. Dr. Rahul Gupta, then the state health officer and later the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Director, identified Huntington’s program as one that “should be developed as a model, not just for the state of West Virginia, but for the entire country.”[1]
The Quick Response Team that earned that designation includes clergy as formal operational members, a feature not documented in any other overdose response program.[1]
How It Works
| Design Question | Huntington’s Answer |
|—|—|
| How is the team activated? | Post-911 follow-up. The team reviews overdose incident data and contacts survivors. |
| Who is on the team? | Four members: paramedic + counselor/recovery coach + law enforcement member + faith leader. |
| Where does it live? | Multi-agency partnership with the Huntington Black Pastors Ministerial Association as a formal institutional partner. |
| What population does it serve? | Anyone who has experienced an overdose in Huntington/Cabell County. |
| What does the team do on scene? | Follow-up visits, treatment connection, sustained engagement, family support, spiritual support, naloxone distribution. |
| How is it funded? | Federal grants (DOJ Bureau of Justice Assistance mentor site designation), state support through West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, local allocations. |
The Four-Member Team
The standard overdose response model pairs a paramedic with a peer recovery specialist. Huntington added two additional members that no other documented program replicates.
The law enforcement member provides data access and community presence. Polachowski in Milwaukee described the parallel in his city: “Our badge gets us in the door.”[8] In Huntington, the law enforcement member serves a similar function while the clinical and spiritual components take over once inside.
The faith leader is the defining distinction. The Huntington Black Pastors Ministerial Association, led by Bishop Shaw, operates an on-call rotation of ministers from multiple denominations. The clergy involvement did not start as a formal program component. Pastors initially offered sandwiches and pantry supplies to the team. Then they pushed for direct involvement. The reported motivation was visceral: “I’m tired of doing funerals for young people. I want to help change all that.”[2]
Connie Priddy, the QRT program coordinator, described the spiritual component as integral to the model’s effectiveness: “The whole team agrees that the spiritual component is critical in helping persons get and stay clean.”[2] Clergy reported that the work helps them “feel less helpless after burying so many people, ranging from young to old, rich to poor and everyone in between.”[2]
The faith leader provides what the team describes as “a spiritual safe haven, caring listener, and gentle encourager.” This is a relational function that operates on a different dimension than clinical assessment or peer support. In a community where religious institutions are deeply trusted and where the pastoral relationship extends across generations, the clergy member accesses conversations and trust that neither a paramedic nor a counselor can replicate.
The Population
Priddy described the demographic range the team encounters: “Even in 2017, I think we had in our mind what we thought was a stereotypical client. And we quickly realized that we could go into an area that somebody might be living in an abandoned house with a dirt floor, and then the next minute, we’re going into a million-dollar home.”[3]
Since its launch in December 2017, the program has contacted nearly 1,200 overdose survivors. Approximately one-third entered treatment, a rate that has held consistent as the program scaled.[4] A 2025 peer-reviewed study published in Substance Use & Misuse by Marshall University researchers confirmed these outcomes using an interrupted time series analysis: the team contacted 1,170 individuals during a 31-month study period, with 335 linked to medication-assisted treatment and recovery programs.[5] This is the most conservatively defined treatment connection rate in the documented field: Huntington counts only people who actually entered a treatment program, not people who were referred or who expressed interest.
Priddy described what even incomplete contacts accomplish: “Even if they’re not ready for treatment, they appreciate someone checking in, asking how they are, bringing them resources. To have people looking, and looking out, for you and saying, we care and are here for you, is powerful.”[2]
The Outcomes
Huntington’s outcome data has a distinction that most overdose response programs lack: CDC confirmation. The CDC documented that the fatal overdose rate in Cabell County fell 24% from 2017 to 2018. Nonfatal overdose cases declined 52% between 2017 and 2019. Overdose calls dropped 40% by 2018.[4] [5]
These are community-level figures, not program-isolated outcomes. The reductions reflect the combined impact of the Quick Response Team, naloxone distribution, treatment expansion, law enforcement operations, and other interventions operating simultaneously. Attributing the decline solely to the QRT would overstate the program’s isolated effect. But the CDC confirmation elevates the data above the program-reported tier that characterizes most overdose response evidence.
The federal government’s assessment was unambiguous. Gupta’s endorsement and the DOJ’s BJA mentor site designation positioned Huntington as one of eight programs nationally authorized to train other communities.[7]
The Faith Dimension
The clergy component raises questions that do not arise with other program models. Church-state separation concerns apply when public funding supports a program with a religious component. The Huntington model addresses this by making clergy participation voluntary and non-denominational (multiple denominations participate through Bishop Shaw’s scheduling rotation) and by framing the spiritual support as one dimension of a multi-disciplinary team rather than as the program’s primary function.
Whether the faith-integrated model transfers to communities where religious institutions play a different social role is an open question. In Huntington, the Black Pastors Ministerial Association has deep roots, multigenerational relationships, and institutional credibility that extends beyond Sunday services. In communities where faith institutions are less central to civic life, or where the association between religion and judgment creates barriers for overdose survivors, the model may not replicate.
The Huntington experience suggests that the faith component addresses a gap that clinical services and peer support leave open: the existential and spiritual dimension of addiction and recovery. Priddy’s description of the clergy as helping people find their “assignment” through recovery points to a dimension of the crisis that treatment protocols and harm reduction supplies do not reach. Whether this can be systematized or whether it depends on the specific relationships and institutional trust that exist in Huntington is not answerable from the available evidence.
Honest Limitations
Huntington’s approximately 32% treatment entry rate is the most conservatively measured figure among documented programs — the program counts actual treatment entry, not referral or expression of interest.[4] [5] Cabell County is a small community in rural Appalachia. Priddy described the local treatment challenge: “We could go into an area that somebody might be living in an abandoned house with a dirt floor, and then the next minute, we’re going into a million-dollar home.”[1] The treatment infrastructure and transportation systems that enable recovery in larger cities are thinner here.
The four-member team requires coordinating a paramedic, a counselor, a law enforcement officer, and a clergy member across four separate institutional calendars, which limits the number of visits the team can conduct.
The program’s national prominence (BJA mentor site, Gupta endorsement, Mayor Williams’ public celebrations) may not reflect its current operational scale.[6] Available sources do not document whether the program has expanded, contracted, or maintained its original capacity since the federal recognition period.
**Why Huntington Matters:** Huntington is the only documented program that integrates faith communities as formal operational partners. The four-member team model represents the most fully staffed approach in the field. The CDC-confirmed outcome data provides the closest thing to independently verified evidence among overdose response programs. And the program’s small-city, Appalachian, conservative-leaning context demonstrates that the model works outside the progressive urban settings where most alternative response programs are documented. A rural or small-city leader looking for proof that overdose response teams function in communities like theirs will find Huntington more relevant than Milwaukee or Portland.
Sources
[1] WV MetroNews, “Quick Response Team seeks to break the overdose cycle in Huntington,” December 27, 2017. Gupta: “should be developed as a model, not just for the state of West Virginia, but for the entire country.” https://wvmetronews.com/2017/12/27/quick-response-team-seeks-to-break-the-overdose-cycle-in-huntington/
[2] FaithHealth, “The Huntington WV Quick Response Team,” February 9, 2021. Clergy quotes, Priddy quotes, Bishop Shaw, spiritual component. https://faithhealth.org/huntington-quick-response-team/
[3] WV Public Broadcasting, “Across W.Va., Localities Look For New Ways To Help People In Crisis,” July 8, 2025. Priddy “million-dollar home” quote; 28 overdoses in 4-5 hours; 40% reduction first year. https://wvpublic.org/story/health-science/across-w-va-localities-look-for-new-ways-to-help-people-in-crisis/
[4] KFF Health News, Taylor Sisk, “West Virginia City Once Battered by Opioid Overdoses Confronts ‘Fourth Wave,'” March 13, 2024. Team composition, 720 contacted, 40% reduction in ambulance calls, CDC data. https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/west-virginia-opioid-overdoses-fourth-wave/
[5] Manne et al., “Evaluation of Quick Response Team,” Substance Use & Misuse, October 2025. Marshall University ARIMA study: interrupted time series analysis of Huntington QRT, 52% decline in nonfatal overdoses 2017-2019. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41044049/
[6] Marshall University, December 2017. DOJ $300,000 grant, HHS $1.05 million grant. Mayor Williams. https://jcesom.marshall.edu/news/musom-news/marshall-university-providing-monitoring-and-assessment-support-to-opioid-epidemic-qrt/
[7] DOJ Bureau of Justice Assistance, COSSAP. Eight peer mentor sites including Huntington. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/quick-response-teams-interdisciplinary-overdose-response-and
[8] Wisconsin Examiner, Isiah Holmes, May 30, 2023. Polachowski: “Our badge gets us in the door, and then the peer support takes over.” https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2023/05/30/perspectives-on-addiction-and-recovery-in-a-city-plagued-with-overdose-deaths/