Mobile recovery unit helps patients ‘turn’ corner on opioid addiction
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Begin the Turn, a vehicular-based program that offers services to people struggling with addiction, is making progress in north Philadelphia, its director said in an interview.
The program’s team consists of a program director/lead physician; a program coordinator; three outreach workers with relevant lived experience; a case manager; and two more physicians. Begin the Turn is modeled after an initiative to reduce gun violence in Chicago called CeaseFire.
“While similar mobile engagement strategies were concurrently developing, the goals, services and design of this program was unique and therefore we were truly creating something new,” David O'Gurek, MD, FAAFP, an associate professor of family and community medicine at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, told Healio Primary Care.
The mobile program provides a variety of services, including treatment for opioid use disorder, wounds and skin and soft tissue infections. The van “contains a clinical area, a counseling area, waiting room and bathroom,” the team wrote in Annals of Family Medicine.
Initially, the team had difficulty acquiring a vehicle, but the delay allowed them to collect early data on the characteristics of the population they were serving, including demographics and social needs.
According to O’Gurek, during the first 14 months of the program, the team engaged with at least 340 individuals. He said a paucity of published data makes it difficult to compare the program’s performance with that of others, prompting the team to find other ways to quantify its impact.
“Sometimes, less tangible outcomes are the most rewarding successes,” he said. “One of our earliest patients shared [details] about his promotion, his housing and his new car. Patients comment on how thankful they were that we were there and were available. The honor of serving this community and them entrusting their care with our innovative program design is success in itself.”
O’Gurek said that regardless of a community’s size, the key to adopting similar initiatives is understanding what each area needs.
“Spend time and energy to truly understand the critical needs of the community first,” he said. “Ask the community what kind of program they want as opposed to assuming our model or one like it will simply work translated to another community.”