NC's mobile clinics provide treatment for opioid addiction
North Carolina has a new tool to fight the opioid epidemic.
Mobile clinics drive across the state to provide treatment to those in need. While small, it is a fully equipped clinic with an exam room and testing materials.
Brad Townsend, who operates a mobile unit, said he once needed similar treatment. For him, the work is personal.
Townsend has been in recovery for four years after more than a decade of using drugs. He went to local rehab but relapsed. Townsend wound up in a California center that offers medically assisted treatment.
“It calms your brain down enough, so you can actually think,” Townsend said. “If you don’t have it and you’re in the grips of addiction, you can’t really think your fix.
Doctors are trying to help. Also, people are making connections and building community – and that’s when there’s change.
“Especially, the peer treatment, having someone who has been there and made it out, that would’ve helped a lot,” Townsend said.
The crisis is at a critical point right now. Each day, 11 North Carolinians die from overdoses, data shows.
Even more people are surviving these overdoses. We're talking more than 9,500 emergency department visits for them in the last 12 months, according to the latest state data. The state average is 91.2 overdose visits per every 100,000 residents.
The counties with the highest monthly rates are in rural counties.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said rural counties have unique challenges, and the mobile unit is one answer.
“There are creative solutions being identified and deployed all across the state,” Stein said. “This is one example of that.”
Townsend feels having something like this mobile unit in the county will be life changing– and life-saving.
“It’s like a plague,” Townsend said. “It’s an epidemic now.
“It’s everywhere so why stigmatize it? If it’s your kid dying, you’d do anything to make a difference.”
The mobile unit clinic is a pilot program right now that got off of the ground because of grant funding. Stein said it is a great example of what could be done with that extra money.
