CHILLICOTHE, Ohio (WSYX) — The Ohio Department of Behavioral Health and numerous community partners unveiled the state’s first Mobile Medication Units (MMU) dedicated to providing opioid addiction treatment to underserved areas.
While overdose deaths in Ohio are on the decline, 4,452 people died from overdose in 2023, according to the state’s most recent data sets, the highest rate of those overdose deaths happening in rural areas. As a way to combat this, Ohio SBH partnered with Anchor Addiction and Wellness Center and the Paint Valley Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Board, building the MMUs with the purpose of providing care to seven underserved rural counties in the state.
“Here in Ohio, we do have the third highest number of opioid treatment programs in the country.” Said Jordan Knipper, the State Opioid Treatment Administrator, “However, we do have significant geographic regions, especially here in southeast Ohio, which have very limited and in often cases no access to opioid treatment programs.”
51 of the 88 counties in Ohio are classified as rural or underserved, hosting just 32 of the state’s 129 opioid treatment providers. The MMUs are meant to bring those services to the areas without them.
“That way that overdose death rate can improve at similar rates that we are seeing in other, more urban parts of Ohio,” Knipper said.
The MMUs will be staffed with nurses, doctors able to administer addiction disorder medicine, security, and a driver.
Anchor president James Leman called it a treatment clinic on wheels, emphasizing the amount of change it can bring to treatment in the communities it will serve.
The mobile clinic will have a fixed route, but has the opportunity to change it with ease, bringing treatment services to locations that are shown to have less access to the resource.
Expecting to cost the state similar numbers as brick and mortar locations.
The MMUs are expected to treat an estimated 200 rural residents in their first year of operation.
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