WMHT Specials
Rensselaer County's Fight Against the Opioid Crisis
Clip: Special | 3m 19sVideo has Closed Captions
Discover the efforts of Rensselaer County Heroin Coalition in combating the opioid crisis.
Dive into the heart of Rensselaer County's battle against the opioid crisis with Mary Fran Wachunas, Director of Public Health. The Rensselaer County Heroin Coalition, a dynamic community-driven initiative, gathers regularly to tackle fatal and non-fatal overdoses.
WMHT Specials is a local public television program presented by WMHT
Support Provided By New York State Education Department.
WMHT Specials
Rensselaer County's Fight Against the Opioid Crisis
Clip: Special | 3m 19sVideo has Closed Captions
Dive into the heart of Rensselaer County's battle against the opioid crisis with Mary Fran Wachunas, Director of Public Health. The Rensselaer County Heroin Coalition, a dynamic community-driven initiative, gathers regularly to tackle fatal and non-fatal overdoses.
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- The Rensselaer County Heroin Coalition is a group of people from Rensselaer County that are trying to reduce the overdoses that we have in our county, both fatal and non-fatal.
(light music) We meet every six weeks.
We have 1100 people on our Listserv.
We have between 80 and 90 people that come faithfully all the time.
We have an auditorium, we have a panel.
I always have someone in recovery talk because that's extremely important.
We learn from that person, most of all, you know, how did they get there?
What were the barriers?
What's the hope?
I also engage everybody in the audience because it's not my coalition, it's the community's coalition.
So you'll see at my meetings, I take the time for, everyone that has come will introduce themselves, and we have many people from schools, local politicians, both from the federal level down to the local level, department heads, providers, people that are in recovery, people that are still using that wanna come, people that lost their loved ones.
We have faith-based, which is a very important part, the faith-based people know their community really well.
State troopers, we have local police, we have our sheriffs.
There is always two sides to everything.
I always say that we need to respect our opinions because we're just here to help each other out.
There is times where topics will be a little controversial, but I try to bring it together.
I try to show respect for everybody.
I want everyone to be able to talk and to share their opinion and to be respected for that.
We have six subgroups.
One of our subgroups is legislation.
Very important group, they're very active.
They involve our assemblymen, our senator, and our congressmen.
They're very influential to the legislation going on in Albany.
People ask, "Well, what do you accomplish?"
And the main thing that we accomplish is those connections, for them to come all the time at our heroin coalition is a really strong influence on us, and our voices get carried over to Albany, which is really, really important.
The opioid crisis has impact Rensselaer County, due to the fact of how many people have died in our county.
A lot of families are hurting.
They lost their loved ones, friends, relatives.
There's not many people right now that you talk to that haven't been affected by the opioid crisis.
We have the Rensselaer County Recovery Helpline that we developed in 2018, which I'm really, really proud of.
We have developed a helpline that people could call 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
It's all volunteers on the other end, and they do help you with information and a linkage to care.
There is hotlines that the state offers, but what we wanted in Rensselaer County is to be able to have the grassroots here and our people on the other end know our resources, know how to get people into treatment, know what insurances are taken and different providers.
Over 400 people have been linked to care, and we're really proud of that because that's 400 people that we can say that have been saved.
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Support Provided By New York State Education Department.