Horizon Health receives grant to help fund community education on substance abuse

Ronda Hughes (middle) presented the first round of checks to Rebecca Rains (left), director of the Knox County Health Department, and Mark Hensley (right), director of the Laurel County Health Department, during a meeting at Horizon Health in London on Dec. 8.

A local nonprofit is partnering with two area health departments to help bring more substance abuse and behavioral health education to their respective communities.

Horizon Health, which operates out of two treatment centers in London and Williamsburg, recently received several grants meant to help target a variety of addiction treatment, including one that will be split and disbursed to the Laurel County Health Department and Knox County Health Department to develop activities to promote learning and community engagement.

The grant, provided through the Health Resource Service Administration (HRSA), will provide $10,000 per year to each health department for a span of four years.

Ronda Hughes, director of compliance and outreach/director of grant reporting for Horizon Health, said the grant has a specific purpose, but hopes to see it also be used to teach children the patterns of substance abuse to help with prevention.

“We’re trying to target children before they get older so that they’re educated about what possible outcomes could happen, and how it starts and how it usually ends up and different issues they have,” said Hughes. “But this grant that we got was mostly for educating the community about substance abuse and about cognitive behavioral therapy. That, in conjunction with MAT [medication-assisted treatment] services, has evidence-based treatment that actually presents results.”

As part of the grant, there are set criteria that must be met, with Horizon providing each health department with specific outcomes they would like to see from the grant’s usage. The health departments will collect and report data that fulfill those outcomes to Horizon.

“At the end of a year’s time, we should be able to look and gauge how effective our outreach program was,” said Hughes.

Additionally, two semi-annual community events will be held, in which community members from each area will be invited to attend a free symposium.

Horizon also received three other grants recently. One of those grants is a Polystimulate Grant, which is geared toward helping those who abuse more than one substance. Another is an Appalachian Regional Community (ARC) Grant, which will be used for creating second-chance employment opportunities for those who are in recovery. Horizon began a program to help those in recovery get back to work last November, according to Hughes, which currently has 212 participants.

The final grant received is to help Horizon become a Certified Community Behavioral Health Center, which will allow them to partner with organizations in other areas to fund positions for patient care coordination. Hughes said the partnership will also include Grace Health with the positions to be located in Barbourville and Pineville, the latter of which she said currently has no recovery programs.

The total of the four grants amounts to $7 million.

For more information about Horizon Health and their programs, visit their website at www.horizonhealthky.org.