Diversion Alert

• Project Title: Wabanaki Pathway to Hope and Healing
• Grant Period: 09/01/2015 – 08/31/2016
• Program Representative Interviewed: Clare Desrosiers, Executive Director
• Location: Aroostook County, Maine
• Program Overview: Diversion Alert was a statewide program in Maine designed to share drug arrest data with healthcare professionals to help them identify patients in need of treatment or at risk for opioid overdose. Diversion Alert partnered with five tribal communities in rural Maine to form a consortium to implement the Wabanaki Pathway to Hope and Healing initiative, with the purpose of reducing prescription opioid and heroin use in their communities. The consortium adapted Project Lazarus to meet the unique needs of the tribal communities. Using grant funds from the HRSA Federal Office of Rural Health Policy's Rural Opioid Overdose Reversal Program, the consortium purchased emergency opioid reversal devices and provided opioid overdose training to law enforcement and healthcare professionals, created a Native American Overdose Response educational video, implemented a social marketing Facebook campaign to reduce stigma, and trained community members about how to respond to an overdose. Diversion Alert ended in 2017 because of lack of funding.

Models represented by this program:

• Community Coalition Prevention Models