A Majority of Those Most at Risk Connected with Resources
The Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative reports that the Plymouth County HUB has identified 300 individuals and families who face multiple high risk situations, and connected 67 percent of them to potentially life-saving resources and treatment programs.
Plymouth County HUB was the nation’s first county-wide model for providing treatment and behavioral health services when it was created in 2020 by a collaboration of PAARI, Plymouth County Outreach, and Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth, with grant funding from South Shore Health.
The HUB uses data and input from stakeholders around the county to identify those most at risk due to 24 different risk factors. The HUB then focuses on situations where individuals and families face multiple areas of high risk. Risk factors monitored by the HUB include mental health, substance use disorder, housing insecurity, food insecurity, criminal involvement and more. A full list of risk factors evaluated by the HUB can be found here.
Those identified as having multiple risk factors are identified as situations for privacy purposes, and any law enforcement officer or provider can attend a weekly HUB meeting to bring situations to the HUB’s attention, prompting outreach efforts.
Late last month, the Plymouth County HUB reached out to the 300th individual identified as being in a situation. All patients currently enrolled in the HUB system have voluntarily agreed to participate in it.
“The HUB model is an evidence based model that was first spearheaded by a community in Canada. By looking upstream at risk factors, communities are able to intervene and prevent future justice system involvement,” said Zoe Grover, executive director of the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative. “Ultimately, programs like these improve community experiences by reducing crime, keeping families and individuals housed, and improving health care access. Research shows that when law enforcement provides a warm handoff to basic resources, outcomes improve.”
The HUB holds weekly meetings that bring together law enforcement, community providers and all other stakeholders from four regions within Plymouth County that are based on District Court regions.
“Anyone who comes to a HUB meeting, whether service providers or police officers, can bring a situation to our attention,” said Program Manager Charlette Tarsi. “My role as Program Manager is to identify service providers in each of the HUB’s regions and bring them to weekly meetings, so when situations come up we are there to offer support and make a plan to intervene with the person.”
Collecting data to identify those facing multiple risk factors has been an ongoing priority of the HUB, and it has enabled the program to identify 300 individuals and families most at risk, while successfully connecting 67 percent of those individuals (187 people) to resources that lowered their risk factors. Another 11 percent of individuals have been reached and informed of resources that can help, but have not yet entered any programs.
“The HUB structure is a key evidence-based process by which the expertise of many agencies is integrated so that complex patients can remain in their community and both advance and sustain their health. As a system of healthcare that serves the entire South Shore region, we greatly appreciate and actively partner with the HUB’s expert coordination which has allowed 300 of our fellow citizens to stay out of acute care settings, thus maintaining that capacity for the entire community,” said Tim Quigley, Senior Vice President of Special Projects for South Shore Health, and Jason Tracy, Chair of Emergency Medicine at South Shore Health. “This HUB model outcomes of decreased costs and improved patient outcomes demonstrates the way forward toward delivering a proactive and sustainable system of ‘health’ and moves us away from the currently (and primarily reactive) illness-based system.”
For more information on the Plymouth County Hub, visit: https://www.plymouthcountyhub.com/.
About PAARI:
The Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative (PAARI) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help law enforcement agencies nationwide create non-arrest pathways to treatment and recovery. Founded alongside the groundbreaking Gloucester, Mass., Police Department Angel Initiative in June 2015, PAARI has been a driving force behind this rapidly expanding community policing movement. We provide technical assistance, coaching, grants, and other capacity-building resources to more than 700 police departments in 40 states.
PAARI works with more than 130 law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts alone. PAARI and our law enforcement partners are working towards a collective vision where non-arrest diversion programs become a standard policing practice across the country, thereby reducing overdose deaths, expanding access to treatment, improving public safety, reducing crime, diverting people away from the criminal justice system, and increasing trust between law enforcement and their communities. Our programs and partners have saved tens of thousands of lives, changed police culture, reshaped the national conversation about the opioid epidemic, and have placed more than 30,000 people into treatment since its founding in June 2015. Learn more at paariusa.org.
