Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Work expands to prevent opioid overdoses for people leaving prison

    Research has found that providing medications for opioid use disorder can help prevent overdoses after release from prison. The state’s Department of Adult Correction recently launched a pilot program to test this theory. 229 of the 287 participants received treatment, several of whom said the access to the medications helped save their lives.

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  • Swim program aims to keep kids safe in the water, and becomes a national model

    Community groups like Swim For Charlie and Learn to Swim are teaching local youth to swim in an effort to promote water safety and combat high rates of drownings, particularly within low-income and minority communities. Since forming in 2020, Swim For Charlie has taught more than 2,100 second graders how to swim, while Learn to Swim served about 3,000 students across 48 schools just last year.

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  • Chatham Maternity Care Center bucks trend of rural maternity closures

    As rural hospitals stopped providing maternity care, Chatham Hospital opened a new Maternity Care Center in September 2020. The five-bed unit provides care to low-risk mothers and newborns and is staffed with family physicians trained in obstetrics and surgery, to keep costs down. In three years, the Maternity Care Center has delivered 402 babies, with birth volumes gradually increasing each year.

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  • Prison system works to combat health care coverage gap by enrolling people in Medicaid before release

    With the new statewide Medicaid expansion, the Department of Adult Correction is working to ensure fewer people reenter society after incarceration and enter a healthcare coverage gap by helping people apply for Medicaid before release. With the Medicaid expansion, 80% of the 15,000 people released from prison each year are now eligible for coverage, and prison staff submit about 100 Medicaid applications each week.

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  • Volunteer-led group sends books to incarcerated women statewide

    Incarcerated women in North Carolina can write letters to request books from the NC Women’s Prison Book Project. Volunteers sort through donated books to best match the requests and send up to three books a month to each person. The project aims to provide intellectual stimulation and a break from the isolation that comes with incarceration.

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  • In-jail mental health treatment producing a ‘night and day' difference for some in Forsyth County

    The eight-week program at the Forsyth County detention center’s Behavioral Health Unit has served 117 men experiencing mental illness — something that is typically underserved in jails. The behavioral health unit provides counseling and mental health services to individuals in the jail who need it and also includes courses on coping, dealing with stress, practicing mindfulness, and preparing for various life transitions.

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  • Collaborative care improves outcomes for those who are pregnant and addicted

    The Substance Use Network (SUN) Project brings together partners in medicine, social services, criminal justice, and recovery services, to provide care for mothers with substance use disorder and their babies. The project is guided by a patient-centered approach that uses pregnancy as an opportunity to encourage someone into treatment and since its launch, more than 40 patients have been treated

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  • Restorative justice solutions for youth are growing abroad, can they become part of the mix in the U.S.

    As North Carolina reevaluates its approach to juvenile justice, the state is looking to examples like Italy, where restorative justice practices such as victim-offender mediation, in which the victim and perpetrator of a crime meet with a mediator to discuss and reconstruct the incident, play a critical role in cases involving youth. The country incarcerates fewer children and young adults on a given day than North Carolina despite its population being roughly six times the size of the state's.

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  • Evidence-based reentry resources key for sicker incarcerated population, researchers say

    Community health workers with North Carolina Formerly Incarcerated Transition Program (NC FIT) counsel people recently released from jails and prisons to help them get the care they need for mental and physical health problems. The program closes some but not all of the gaps left by the state's inadequate Medicaid coverage and prison health services. Banking on the trust that comes with shared experiences, the formerly incarcerated health workers can connect people with medication-assisted treatment for substance use, covid-related treatments, and mental health care, all common ailments post-incarceration.

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  • North Carolina's Latino residents are more vaccinated than the non-hispanic population

    Hispanic residents in North Carolina went from having one of the lowest vaccination rates to one of the highest. The health department ran bilingual ads on a variety of media types, including social media and held virtual town halls and Facebook Live events. They also paid community health workers in each county to use their existing relationships with Latino residents and improve access to information about the vaccine and to the vaccine itself. Outreach from trusted ambassadors has proven more effective among communities that have deep mistrust of institutionalized structures.

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