As part of a collaborative initiative driven by the Erie County Director of Harm Reduction, PCRI’s role is to provide programmatic, quality assurance and evaluation services to achieve the overall goal of the project: to reduce the impact of illicit opioids, stimulants and other substances on individuals and communities by providing peer support and case management to individuals who use substances and are involved in the criminal justice system in Erie County, specifically focused on areas that have been historically underserved, marginalized and negatively affected by continued poverty and inequality through the program's comprehensive and collaborative initiatives. 

Erie County Department of Health

Diane Berdine (Principal Investigator and Project Coordinator; Department of Family Medicine) 
Bonnie Vest, PhD (Lead Evaluator; Department of Family Medicine) 
Matthew Thomas, PhD (Evaluator; Department of Family Medicine)

Bureau of Justice Assistance Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant and Substance Use Program - [10/1/24 - 9/30/27]

This project will serve the area of Erie County, NY, which is a mixture of urban, suburban, tribal and rural municipalities in Western NY State. Of particular significance to this program is the largest urban area in upstate NY, the City of Buffalo, which is home to a historically marginalized community dealing with significant social determinants of health and health disparities. The project will be driven by the Erie County Director of Harm Reduction, who oversees the Erie County Overdose Prevention Task Force, which meets quarterly; the Task Force will be the multidisciplinary coordinating body for this project. The project team consists of the Erie County Director of Harm Reduction; the University at Buffalo (UB) HOPE of Erie County Project Director; and Certified Recovery Peer Advocates (Peer Support Specialists).

This project’s primary activity is to embed social workers, peers and/or persons with lived experience at all intercepts of the Sequential Intercept Model to assist persons with justice involvement and their families to navigate the justice system and to increase their connection to treatment and recovery support services. This includes law enforcement, pretrial and probation agencies, prosecutor-led programs, legal defense agencies, child welfare agencies, courts and jails to support community reentry. Across all intercepts, the project team will provide formal peer support services to 450 at-risk individuals who will be the intended beneficiaries over the three-year grant period; 100 in year 1, and 175 each in years two and three. The project will have the expected outcomes of reducing overdoses, and of providing harm reduction education/training services, including overdose prevention education, to partner agencies and individuals across all points of the sequential intercept, along with a research and evaluation component conducted by the University at Buffalo.

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