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‘Stories from Sullivan' takes an in-depth look at the opioid crisis

Isabel Braverman - Staff Writer
Posted 6/24/19

SULLIVAN — “Welcome to Sullivan County, NY” begins the Rockefeller Institute's Stories from Sullivan series. Below it is a photo of a giant billboard that reads “Addiction? There is always …

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‘Stories from Sullivan' takes an in-depth look at the opioid crisis

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SULLIVAN — “Welcome to Sullivan County, NY” begins the Rockefeller Institute's Stories from Sullivan series. Below it is a photo of a giant billboard that reads “Addiction? There is always hope…”

This paints a picture of what the research project was all about. For over one and a half years, researchers Patricia Strach and Katie Zuber from the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany spent countless hours on the ground speaking with anyone touched by the opioid crisis in Sullivan County.

This included everyone from public health officials, elected officials, doctors, lawyers, treatment providers and those who are facing addiction, their families, as well as community activists.

“We chose to look at Sullivan because it had some of the most striking statistics in terms of overdose admissions into the hospital and overdose deaths,” Strach, who is the Director for Policy and Research at the Rockefeller Institute, said.

According to the New York State Department of Health, Sullivan County saw 16 deaths from opioids in 2016 (the most recent data). Strach and Zuber knew that the epidemic has a huge impact not only in the state but across the country, and they wanted to explore what addiction looked like in a rural community.

“We didn't understand what the problem was and why it's so hard to address,” Strach said. “So we wanted to go down into a local community and talk to people on the frontlines about what the problem looked like, how they were experiencing it, and what they really needed from both levels of government in Albany and Washington D.C. to get a handle on it.”

The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government is a public policy think tank founded in 1981 that conducts cutting-edge research and analysis to inform lasting solutions to the problems facing New York State and the nation. Researchers hope to provide policy makers with important information that can help inform their decisions.

From talking with many people, Strach and Zuber found some common themes that emerged. A big one they heard many times was the lack of transportation and access to treatment facilities and doctors who specialize in addiction.

They took those themes and broke them into sections, ultimately creating the 18-part series, which can be read in full online. The series includes photos, video and audio so people can really understand the big picture.

“I think the value of this research is that we didn't necessarily have any pre-conceived notion of what we were going to find when we went into Sullivan County,” Zuber remarked. “We just let that emerge from the conversations that we had with the people who face this problem every day.”

Some of those people include Julie Pisall and Barbara Gref who run The Kingfisher Project, a volunteer-based community information project, and Isaac Green Diebboll and Thomas Bosket of ENGN, a civic creative center based in Callicoon.

Green Diebboll was contracted by the Sullivan County Department of Public Health in 2018 to begin the process of developing a series of short films, called “Human Being: Facing Addiction,” to humanize the perception of people facing substance abuse.

Pisall started The Kingfisher Project to honor her daughter, Rebecca, who was shot and killed when she was 20 years old on June 20, 2014 due to her addiction to heroin.

As part of the initiative, Kingfisher Project volunteers produce a radio segment that airs weekly on Making Waves, a weekly radio show broadcast at public radio station WJFF on Mondays at 7 p.m.

Pisall hopes to bring awareness to heroin addiction so people can get the help they need.

“One of the reasons that I do this is because nobody wants to bury their child,” she said. “That's the way I feel—there's always hope for people. And I hope the policy makers do a lot of things before other parents have to bury their children.”

Both The Kingfisher Project and ENGN will be part of an exhibit presented by The Rockefeller Institute. It will highlight Strach and Zuber's findings with a photography exhibit and panel discussion. Called “Fighting Back,” it will be held on Wednesday, June 26 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in Albany.

The idea of a community coming together to fight back against the opioid epidemic is a message that both researchers wanted to emphasize. They spoke about the term “deaths of despair,” which is the notion that middle-aged white Americans in rural areas are dying from drug overdose and suicide at higher rates.

But they wanted to move away from that idea of a “black cloud” hanging over communities like Sullivan County and understand the root of the problem, such as the very tangible issues of lack of transportation and access to care. For instance, there are no detox beds in Catskill Regional Medical Center.

“Substance use is a problem for both urban and rural communities, but there are certain conditions in these rural communities that can make it especially challenging to get a hold of the opioid problem,” Zuber said.

The researchers are also looking at this public health crisis in Orange County and Queens. They hope to bring their findings to government officials on both the state and federal level. After that, they will circle back to Sullivan County and bridge that gap.

“We want to see if the solutions that state and federal policy makers are putting into place actually address the problems that people on the ground say they are facing,” Strach said.

As the opioid crisis continues the overall picture might seem bleak. But Strach and Zuber said they found a community that is actively responding to the epidemic with the resources and tools at their disposal, from art and gardening to innovative partnerships with local government and law enforcement. They are fighting back.

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