RIO GRANDE COUNTY — The Rio Grande Public Health Department announced last week that its harm-reduction programs, SHARRP, and Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT), celebrated one-year anniversaries.

The programs were approved by the Rio Grande Board of Health on Sept. 30, 2020, and hit the ground running, helping hundreds of people access services throughout the region.

The primary service offered by SHARRP is the needle exchange program, where people who use injectable drugs can bring the used syringes to be safely disposed of and in return are given sterile syringes. This leads to fewer syringes being disposed of improperly and reduces costly injection site wounds. Those wounds can become serious medical concerns, which then require treatment in local hospitals and health clinics, with the patient often unable to cover those costs.

Additional costs savings and public health benefits are found through preventing the spread of diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV.

“This definitely helps reduce emergency room utilization with its avoidable costs, build trusting relationship with these individuals through better outreach and provisions of needed resources to stay healthy, and finally to help mitigate the substance use crisis in our county,” said Dr. Kolawole Bankole, Director of the Rio Grande Public Health Department.   

Though SHARRP is a syringe exchange program, Rio Grande County Public Health Department explains that it is more of a point of entry into other helping services. The department believes that the most important thing they are doing is creating a trusting relationship with people who inject drugs. When they are able to trust the volunteers and staff at SHARRP, they are able to access help when they are ready to quit, Bankole stated.

SLV AHEC, Valley-Wide Health Systems, and the San Luis Valley Behavioral Health Group have worked with Rio Grande County Public Health and Rio Grande Hospital to bring the SHARRP program here. These partners are among the many organizations in the San Luis Valley that have been working to reduce the harm caused by drug use in the community.

“This partnership collaboration is one of the great involvements I have seen among service providers and that I have been actively part of, in our San Luiz Valley region to respond to the opioid crisis in our community, with good results and more promising accomplishments on other related programs,” reiterated Ida White, the Rio Grande County COVID-19 Coordinator.

There are other successful programs underway including the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, which works to divert people who use illegal drugs away from being charged and convicted of a crime. Instead, people are connected to case managers who provide services, resources and connections to mental health services, housing, and vocational training.

Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) is the use of medications in combination with counseling and behavioral therapies, which is effective in the treatment of opioid use disorders (OUD) and can help some people to sustain recovery. The mobile unit is part of efforts from SLVBH to help with the opioid crisis here in the Valley.

According to Crossroads Director and Founder, Dr. Ian Walker and Chief Clinical Officer of Intensive Services, Jennifer Silva the unit is traveling all over the Valley to offer mobile services to people who may not be able to make it in for regular treatment at their facilities and to make the treatment options more accessible to anyone seeking treatment for addiction.

These services and many others are available through the Rio Grande Public Health Department. For more information, visit www.riograndecounty.org/departments/business-offices/public-health.