The purpose of the upcoming Reimagining Opioid Abatement conference is to bring together both decisionmakers and those working on the opioid epidemic, day in and day out, to share not just best practices but also the nitty-gritty of working in this space. We know it will take a community-centric approach to address not only the opioid crisis but the underlying causes of it – poverty, lack of education and employment, and challenges in housing and transportation. A detailed agenda with times and speakers will be provided closer to the event date, but as of August 2025, our planned sessions include:

  • It Starts at Home: How Stable Communities Enable Recovery

The focus of this panel will be how the social determinants of health – including housing, a safe environment, and stable employment – are key to not only creating a safe community, but also one that is best positioned to help those in active recovery. We will feature speakers that work in reentry programs, workforce development, and wraparound support services across different communities.

  •  Meeting People Where They Are: Innovative Care Delivery

Health care providers are a key component of any effort to reduce opioid misuse, and, as a result, must be involved in any meaningful conversations in this space. This session will focus on new approaches to eliminating care barriers, establishing family-centered models along the continuum of care, and novel prevention strategies – all essential to eliminating the prescription opioid use to misuse pipeline.

  •  Therapeutic Justice: From Punishment to Restoration

So many individuals who use and misuse opioids interact with the justice system at one point in their lives, which allows these institutions to have an incredible impact on those people. In this session, we’ll discuss how the justice system can be used as not only punitive, but also as an opportunity to build community through treatment and accountability courts, peer mentorship, family restoration, and targeted reentry support.

  • Working Upstream: Education, Prevention, and Stigma Reduction

In the substance use space, there are two truths – prevention education is absolutely necessary to prevent new users from starting to use drugs, and in many cases, prevention education is not working as intended. There is a huge need to explore why these messages are not landing, an effort that will require granular research and demographic-based, targeted communications. This panel will discuss peer education models, how to best use storytelling to connect with an audience, broader community stigma reduction campaigns, and how to most effectively communicate in terms of both message and audience.

  • Coordination to Create a Healthy Community

Experience has taught us that coordination and cooperation are not only key to helping individuals that misuse drugs, but also to ensuring that a broader community is healthy and whole. This session will discuss how to best collaborate and communicate effectively across service providers, city limits, and state lines, as well as how to connect with all members of a community that may have been impacted by the opioid crisis.

  •  The Path Forward: Scaling these Solutions

To wrap up our day, we will bring up policy leaders to bring everything together – this panel will include public health leaders, policy makers, and academics to discuss how to best shape a cohesive and community-centered policy that will drive down not only opioid misuse but also improve the general safety and security of our cities, counties, and broader region.

A detailed agenda with times and speakers will be provided closer to the event date.