LENOIR CITY, Tenn. — Healthcare providers and experts gathered in Lenoir City on Thursday to discuss ways they could better address substance abuse and prevent overdoses.
The Metro Drug Coalition hosts the East Tennessee Opioid Conference every year, bringing together leaders in healthcare to explore a wide range of topics. Those topics included trauma-informed services, guidelines for harm-reduction practices, addressing trauma in treatment and ongoing care for people who use opioids.
Speakers included leaders from the Tennessee Poison Control Center, the Knox County Regional Forensics Center, the Alliance for Multispecialty Research, the Harmony Family Center, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Prevention Institute.
"These are people just like you and me who are struggling. And it can happen to anyone," said Karen Pershing, the executive director of the MDC.
The conference was established around seven years ago to help train healthcare providers on safely prescribing medicine that could be addictive. Since then, the conference has broadened to discuss different components of care, as well as trends in substance abuse.
"How do you create an environment where they're going to come forward and actually share that, that they're struggling?" said Pershing. "The most important thing — we can now prevent addiction before it starts. So again, understanding what some of those pathways are that lead people to want to use drugs and how can we, again, interrupt those pathways?"
