Wellness division hires substance use and mental well being plan manager to combat opioid crisis – Salisbury Post

Wellness division hires substance use and mental well being plan manager to combat opioid crisis

Published 12:09 am Thursday, March 16, 2023

SALISBURY — Hayley Edwards is the newest addition to the Rowan County Public Wellness Department’s group focused on decreasing the quantity of opioid overdoses and deaths in the county.

Edwards was hired as the substance use and mental well being plan manager, and will be in charge of overseeing the department’s substance use applications, which includes The HOPE Plan, which is “a partnership involving Rowan County Public Wellness, Rowan County Emergency Healthcare Solutions, and the Center for Prevention Solutions that gives supportive outreach to people who use opioids and/or at higher danger of an opioid overdose.”

Edwards will make confident the plan, as effectively as other individuals in the future, runs smoothly. She will also give strategic path, collaborate with other agencies like United Way, and be in-charge of the administration side, which is basically generating confident the division and the group has all the essential tools to do their jobs.

Beginning out in healthcare in 2009 although living in Florida, Edwards moved to Rowan County in 2017 and got a job with Novant Wellness psychiatric care and counseling carrying out front-workplace perform.

“This is exactly where I got my foot in the door operating with substance use and mental well being, and from there I was capable to perform inside Rowan County and surrounding counties acquiring to expertise what the struggles had been with the population that we serve,” Edwards mentioned.

She has only been on the job for 4 weeks, but Edwards is currently committed to generating her group as efficient as attainable.

“My concentrate is genuinely operating on the internal group, constructing it, generating confident all the pieces are in spot and strengthening it,” Edwards mentioned. “We do have a couple factors we are operating on for enhancing our information. I genuinely just want to fine-tune the group, that way when we start off developing and rolling factors out we can do that to the very best of our capacity.”

As the well being division introduces extra applications and solutions, Edwards will be required behind the scenes, generating confident factors are getting run effectively, particularly when it comes to administrative perform which is vital when it comes to plan management.

Final year, the county received $15 million as element of the nationwide opioid settlements. The cash will be spent more than a 17-year period and be applied to implement various tactics the division thinks are most efficient to address the opioid epidemic, such as recovery assistance solutions, Naloxone distribution, post-overdose response teams and syringe service applications. Edwards will be instrumental in generating confident the roll-out and adhere to via of these initiatives are profitable.

“The administration of this is so huge,” mentioned the well being division director Alyssa Harris. “A lot of what Hayley is supplying is each the strategic path and the admin side…keeping up with all of it is going to be a lot.”

Previously, Edwards worked as a behavioral well being plan manager, exactly where she discovered the ins and outs of dealing with grants and constructing applications.

“That’s exactly where I genuinely got to see how you can have a hands-on impact of assisting people in want,” she mentioned. “So when I saw this position come across, particularly overseeing the HOPE Plan and the chance with the settlement, I believed ‘this is a passion of mine and this is an chance for me to genuinely assist people.’”