Well being division hires substance use and mental overall health 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 Well being 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 overall health plan manager, and will be in charge of overseeing the department’s substance use applications, such as The HOPE System, which is “a partnership in between Rowan County Public Well being, Rowan County Emergency Health-related Solutions, and the Center for Prevention Solutions that offers supportive outreach to men and women who use opioids and/or at higher danger of an opioid overdose.”

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

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

“This is exactly where I got my foot in the door operating with substance use and mental overall health, and from there I was capable to operate inside Rowan County and surrounding counties receiving to knowledge what the struggles have 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 producing her group as productive as feasible.

“My concentrate is genuinely operating on the internal group, creating it, producing positive all the pieces are in location and strengthening it,” Edwards mentioned. “We do have a couple items we are operating on for enhancing our information. I genuinely just want to fine-tune the group, that way when we start out developing and rolling items out we can do that to the finest of our potential.”

As the overall health division introduces far more applications and solutions, Edwards will be necessary behind the scenes, producing positive items are becoming run effectively, in particular when it comes to administrative operate which is vital when it comes to plan management.

Final year, the county received $15 million as aspect of the nationwide opioid settlements. The revenue will be spent more than a 17-year period and be utilized to implement various tactics the division thinks are most productive to address the opioid epidemic, such as recovery help solutions, Naloxone distribution, post-overdose response teams and syringe service applications. Edwards will be instrumental in producing positive the roll-out and comply with by means of of these initiatives are prosperous.

“The administration of this is so enormous,” mentioned the overall health division director Alyssa Harris. “A lot of what Hayley is delivering 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 overall health plan manager, exactly where she discovered the ins and outs of dealing with grants and creating applications.

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