Every infant/toddler being raised in a family struggling with substance use disorder will have the opportunity to build a healthy brain through healthy relationships with their caregiver and each of their family members will be supported in recovery and parenting.
Healthy Connections represents a collaborative treatment approach that encourages functional partnerships in recovery, educates families and the community about best practices and resources and works to improve the quality of family relationships.
Addiction has taken too many community members from us. We will build a family-supportive care network that provides the tools and support that families need to successfully enter and remain in recovery so they can raise their children in a supportive and healthy environment.
Exposure to opiates and other substances places children at risk for poor academic, social and medical outcomes. The Coalition will provide assessment of need for children affected and plans for effective intervention to curb the negative impacts of exposure during pregnancy. In addition, community-wide supportive prevention efforts will encourage resilience in children whose families are struggling with the effects of addiction.
Our people are our strongest asset because we are West Virginia Strong. Healthy Connections will empower those in recovery to become a formal part of the prevention and treatment network in our region.
The Coalition will take a leadership role in providing needed information and assistance to community members and agencies about the process of addiction and recovery. The focus will be on understanding the sadly inclusive nature of this devastating epidemic to reduce the stigma and blame that those affected often feel that can prevent them from coming forward for help.
Our community has many strong, solid supportive networks that currently lack the infrastructure to collaborate effectively. Healthy Connections will build that infrastructure for collaboration.
The prevention and intervention approaches offered by Healthy Connections partners represent the state of the art interventions for addiction recovery and the establishment of strong family and community foundations.
By using the Coalition as a mechanism for training, we are ensuring that tomorrow’s health care leaders take steps to reduce the spread of addiction and provide the most effective, family-focused interventions available to prevent relapse and support successful recovery.
healthyconnectionswv@marshall.edu
[INSERT RELEVANT SOCIAL ICONS]