HEALing Communities is one of the single most important steps of the many that President Trump, Leader McConnell, and other members of Congress have taken to confront our country’s opioid crisis.
As Prepared for Delivery
Good morning, everyone, and thank you so much for welcoming me here to Lexington. In particular, I’d like to thank Leader McConnell for inviting me to this important occasion.
HEALing Communities is one of the single most important steps of the many that President Trump, Leader McConnell, and other members of Congress have taken to confront our country’s opioid crisis.
So I want to give everyone a brief perspective on the genesis of HEALing Communities, and how it fits into HHS and President Trump’s overall strategy for combating the opioid crisis.
Soon after taking office as HHS Secretary last year, I met with Sam Quinones, the author of the book Dreamland, which was for many Americans, including myself, an introduction to the stories of individuals and communities hardest hit by the opioid crisis.
I asked him, “Sam, where in all of your travels have you seen reasons for hope?” I asked because, frankly, it seemed like we faced an overwhelming challenge—like trying to boil the ocean.
But he had a clear answer: Go talk to those in the hardest-hit communities and learn about the coalitions that they have built. When communities have been able to come together, he said, they can beat this crisis.
He was right, and many of you know that, because a lot of the communities where he found hope were here in Kentucky.
It takes a whole community to beat this crisis—it takes doctors, nurses, cops, courts, teachers, mayors, researchers, parents, coaches, young people, faith leaders. It takes everybody.
So when I was thinking about how we could approach this crisis, I mentioned the role of communities to NIH’s director, Dr. Collins, and it turned out he’d done some similar thinking.
We could test out a comprehensive, science-based approach to this crisis by pouring resources into communities that have been hard-hit, and aiming for very aggressive reductions in overdose deaths. That’s the idea that became the HEALing Communities study.
We believe we can see impressive results from this effort in Kentucky. But the good news is that the work of local communities is already producing results.
We’ve seen the total amount of opioids prescribed nationally drop 31 percent since President Trump took office.
We’ve seen the number of Americans receiving medication-assisted treatment increase by 38 percent. Naloxone prescribing has risen 378 percent.
Most importantly, we saw provisional counts of drug overdose deaths drop from 2017 to 2018, the first drop in more than 20 years. Overdose deaths over the most recently reported 12-month period here in Kentucky are down more than 11 percent.
As I said, those results are a tribute to people on the ground—here in Lexington, and all across Kentucky, from Paducah to Pikeville.
Their efforts have gotten powerful support from congressional leaders, including Senator McConnell, and members of Congress who have put a special emphasis on fighting this crisis, like Representatives Hal Rogers, Andy Barr, and Brett Guthrie.
I want to thank each of you for your dedication to combating this crisis and giving us at HHS and everyone on the ground the tools we need.
The HEALing Communities study would not be possible without funding that Senator McConnell helped shepherd through Congress. He also helped lead the passage of the SUPPORT Act, the largest-ever single piece of legislation to tackle drug addiction in America.
The SUPPORT Act has helped advance HHS’s five-point strategy for the opioid crisis, which was announced at Representative Hal Rogers’s Rx Summit just over two years ago.
That strategy includes work on a comprehensive approach to supporting people in recovery, which has been a focus for Senator McConnell and Representatives Barr and Guthrie.
Their legislative work is going to save lives. When we announced the award of these HEALing Communities grants to four states at HHS earlier this year, we were joined by Alex Elswick, a Kentuckian who’s in long-term recovery, who’s become a leader on these issues, and who’s here today.
At the launch event in Washington, he shared that he had a funeral to go to the next day, of a young friend who had died of an overdose.
HEALing Communities came too late for that friend, Alex said—but it’s just in time for so many Kentuckians who will benefit from the support it will give them to enter recovery, save lives, and heal their communities.
So thank you to everyone who has helped make HEALing Communities possible, from those who got it funded in Congress, to those who’ve designed the initiative here in Kentucky, and those who will be doing all the work on the ground—in treatment centers, hospitals, jails, schools, and everywhere else.
Thank you for your dedication to beating this crisis, and thank you for having me here today.
