Welcome back. I know you enjoyed that conversation between Dr. sharps Dina, and Mr. Botticelli. I'd like to introduce you to two additional people who can provide a perspective on stigma. Why it's important to understand in the context of the opioid epidemic? Most importantly, what we can do to change the narrative around opioid use disorders, and treatment in our workplaces and in our communities. Dr. Beth McGinty, is a faculty member here at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She studies substance use, mental health, and is an expert on all matters related to policy and those two areas. Dr. McGinty, will share with us some of the latest research on stigma, and again importantly, what we can do to reframe the conversation around opioids in our communities. The second person I'd like to introduce you to is Chief Tom Synan. Chief Synan has a frontline police chiefs perspective on the devastating impacts of stigma. I know you'll find his comments very eliminating. Do enjoy. We have little clues here and there but don't know a lot about effect of stigma reduction strategies. What we do know, as I said is limited, but one for growing body of evidence suggests that emphasizing personal story, which is something we heard a lot about today had Michael Botticelli very powerful saying, "I am a person in recovery." So people who are high-profile telling their stories, making this less of a hidden or shameful condition, I think is really important, and the research does show that that type of personal story has the potential to be destigmatizing. We also have research showing map. Educational campaigns or messages emphasizing the structural barriers to recovery from addiction, insurance doesn't cover treatment or there aren't enough beds available, or enough outpatient treatment slots available outpatient treatment and often what we need in terms of opioid. Those messages can be destigmatizing. They can also importantly raise support for policies to overcome those barriers. I think what's important especially for me as a police officer is a police chief is the stigma of part of it and that was one of the things we identified from the very beginning with the Hamlin Canada Huron coalition. We wanted to save lives. Number 1, which we pushed nor came out, and we've been doing that. The other thing is we knew way to change the stigma. None of the programs we we're using on a front end will work with the public's not supporting. The public dictate policy. The public dictates funding, and if wouldn't get them on board and we can change not just this. This opioid crisis is I hope that catalyst to take addiction out of the criminal justice system into the mental, and medical health issue it is, and we've got to get society to look at this as a chronic condition. If we treat it like a chronic condition knowing that there's going to be recidivism just like smoking, just diabetes, just like all the other things we're chronically addicted to. If we can get that support on the backend, if we can get the community on board, this would be much easier for us to solve. So it's got to change the stigma and I'm hoping that means a law enforcement officer is a police chief standing up and saying, "What we've done in the past hasn't worked. What we're doing now is not working. If we continue to do it, it will not work in the future. We have to change this to systems are overwhelmed jails, hospitals, public servers." Were all overwhelmed all because of us as a society are unwilling to look at addiction and say we need to do this differently. We have to get out of this mindset that this group people are something different. One of the things that bothers me the most is when I hear somebody say, "Why even save them, let them die." There was no other segment of society that people tell me to let them die. No one. I've been on core actions in the support and for the third DUI, no one wants to say let them die. I've been on a suicide drawn on the same person multiple times. No one has ever said let them die. What they've said is risk your life to save theirs, and that's what we do as first responders. I want people tell me that I think, you've never stood over the body of someone who's overdosed and died because if you would, you know that there's a mother, father, brother, sister, son, or daughter standing next to you. If you don't have empathy for them, have empathy for the family. You should have empathy for all of them. There are fellow citizens and you think that that doesn't impact us as a community. It does. It impacts the first responder, impacts business, it impacts the hospital systems, it impacts all of us, and I think if we took a little bit of time to actually care about the other people, and accept them for all the good, the bad, and the ugly they have like me, like everybody else. I think we'd be able to put a big dent in this. To me stigmas extremely important.
