80 million dollar grant to be distributed for opioid treatment
JACKSON, Tenn. — Around 80 million dollars will be distributed to over one-hundred organizations to support opioid treatment.
The Tennessee Opioid Abatement Council announced their first round of community grants.
This is the OAC’s first community grant.
Ron Bobal, the founder of A Betor Way, which has been selected for the grant, has made it his mission to help others.
“We’re trying to keep them alive so they can enter into recovery at some point in time during their span of addiction. That’s our goal, because there’s an unspoken rule out here that addicts just don’t recover. It’s the saddest thing we deal with,” said Bobal.
He stated that opioid abuse is such an important issue to pay attention to.
“We see somebody on Friday, we might not see them until the next Friday. That’s how dangerous this opioid condition is in our community,” said Bobal.
That’s why he sees as many people as he can.
“Let’s just say that we see probably well over 500 different individuals during the span of that year,” said Bobal.
Although the grant has not been given yet, the creative ideas keep coming to Bobal.
“Utilizing you know, like, heat maps and responses, and basically word of mouth for where people may be living within walking distance. Our goal is to add more staff and to be able to create basically some aspect of case management that would allow us to travel with individuals to the next step,” said Bobal.
He stated that he doesn’t know exactly how this came about but he’s glad that he was on the ones selected.
“We were just on pins and needles trying to figure out is it gonna happen, when is sit gonna happen and now it looks like there was just a great push to get this done. And whatever that was, we’re very appreciative of it and we hope that it just provides. We hope to capture the data and statistics that will help make this investment back in our community the strongest it can be,” said Bobal.
Bobal also stated that the time it takes to get in facilities can cost a life, and that he hopes to be there every time someone needs him.
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