Grass-roots heroin fighters move into Ohio

A grass-roots group that’s battling heroin in a hands-on, no-wait approach in Northern Kentucky is expanding with a chapter in Southwest Ohio.

People Advocating Recovery, or PAR, Southwest Ohio will meet for the first time Thursday, at the Addictions Services Council of Greater Cincinnati, in Avondale.

Carol Baden of Western Hills, a nurse and medical professional for 25 years who quit her job last spring to unify the fight against heroin in Ohio, is leading the effort.

“The time is right,” Baden said. “We are going to bring together people of like minds who are working progressively to find solutions, cooperatively.”

Baden began her fight against heroin and addiction early this year after learning of heroin inundating the suburbs of Southwest Ohio. She has organized meetings to educate the community, provided resource lists for those suffering from addiction and created the Community Recovery Project, a support and resources group on opiate and heroin addiction because, as the website says, “heroin sucks.”

Baden was personally touched by the death of a 24-year-old man from the East Side who died in December from a heroin overdose and whose family had struggled to keep him drug-free.

“It just hit me so hard, I just could not get it out of my mind,” Baden said. “Not being able to do anything to help was not an option.”

That’s when she, along with her husband, Peter Baden, became actively involved in fighting heroin and prescription painkiller addiction.

She threw herself into learning about the heroin epidemic and decided to fight it full time, quitting her job at a local physician’s office in the spring.

She attended meetings of several informal groups of people in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky who were joining to support one another.

She was inspired by Northern Kentucky PAR to work with its leadership to create a Southwest Ohio chapter of the organization. The group has several members who live in Ohio but hadn’t found a similar organization to join.

NKY PAR Chairman Jason Merrick began working with Baden last summer on creating an Ohio chapter. He had been seeking a way to get into Ohio.

“We are community-driven. We function around the needs of our stakeholders,” Merrick said. “They needed help across the river.”

Merrick said Baden, a past nurse, is the perfect leader for the action-oriented organization. “She’s a real fireball.”

Baden said an advantage for PAR Southwest Ohio is that it’s “not reinventing the wheel.” She expects a multitiered group of families, medical professionals, law enforcement, educators, faith-based groups and others to join.

That’s what Northern Kentucky has with PAR and the NKY Heroin Impact and Response Task Force.

“They speak so clearly as to what we are trying to do: Activity and action. Education. Understanding the disease of addiction,” Baden said.

Nan Franks, CEO of the Addictions Services Council of Greater Cincinnati, opened her center as a first meeting place for the new PAR chapter. She said if the group gets too large, she’ll do her best to help figure out a new meeting spot.

“There’s something about the community base that PAR brings that will be particularly effective in Ohio,” Franks said. “It’s a great vehicle for families who are concerned – about drugs, alcohol, addiction. They share resources, ideas and thoughts.”

NKY People Advocating Recovery is a voice for the community’s addicted, and for their families. Every month the group, mainly addicts’ families-turned-activists who’ve seen the impact of the heroin epidemic up close, meets to plan and execute the fight against addiction.

Some examples of NKY PAR’s efforts in the past year:

•Creating clinics to give away the life-saving pharmaceutical naloxone to those at high risk of heroin or prescription painkiller overdose and teaching life-saving skills at the free clinics.

•Organizing community cleanups to rid streets, parks and neighborhoods of dirty needles dropped by addicts.

•Advocating in Frankfort for addicts’ rights and heroin-fighting legislation including expanding the accessibility of naloxone.

But it’s also a sounding board and place where families of the addicted and those in recovery can meet and share a bond and support each other in their plight.

Merrick said the expansion of PAR into Ohio strengthens the mission of the organization to end the stigma of addiction, inform and educate people in it and advocate for the rights and needs of those addicted.

“We want to bring all of the grass-roots organizations together,” Merrick said. “Giving all of their efforts one organized voice to better address communities’ needs and offer our resources.” ⬛

If you go

What: People Advocating Recovery, Ohio, or PAR Ohio, first meeting.

Where: The Addiction Services Center of Greater Cincinnati, 2828 Vernon Place, Avondale.

Who: Anyone who wants to join PAR Ohio, a community group committed to fighting the disease of addiction.