Vegas Stronger

The mission of Vegas Stronger is to reverse the devastation caused to our homeless population by opioid and stimulant use disorder. When our services are fully implemented, we will be the hub and clearinghouse for essential elements of recovery of these disorders. These services include: yoga classes, drug testing, case management, counseling, intensive outpatient programs (IOP), 12-step meetings, nutrition services, medication-assisted treatment (MAT), psychiatry, and occupational therapy. We are removing funding constraints and supplying the full range of services included in our program for free. Our treatments are offered to anyone regardless of age, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, religion, or any other social or personal characteristics.

The Vegas Stronger program will be 30 to 90 days of intensive outpatient treatment followed by up to a full year of occupational therapy during the day and a combination of counseling and 12-Step meetings during the evenings. We will ensure housing and employment transition and training to all program participants and will link those clients to crucial social service agencies. Vitamin, nutrition, and fitness support will be offered in tandem with the housing, counseling, and occupational services to optimize outcomes.

Utilizing our network of community partners, Vegas Stronger will unite medication, therapeutic treatment, case management, housing and work training, along with a wide variety of social services to create an effective web we are certain will greatly diminish detrimental impacts from the opioid epidemic. Utilizing data aggregation and analysis we will track and monitor each client through a series of milestones and related metrics. This data compilation and tracking will include urinalysis, clinical markers and progress through abstinence and employability. By tracking program outcomes, we will have created an efficacious program that can be scaled for expansion and implementation at a state and federal level.

In order to achieve the desired outcome - that every opioid addicted person will be provided an easily accessible pathway to seek out, find and live their own best life through an individualized recovery process – a robust hub-and-spoke network of community partners will be required.

The proposed Vegas Stronger Network includes the Las Vegas Rescue Mission for immediate housing, food, and counseling services; Crossroads Treatment Center for detoxification service and rehabilitation treatment; Silver State Health Services for Primary Healthcare; Catholic Charities for Food, Housing, Rehabilitation and Counseling services; Veterans Village of Las Vegas for holistic, comprehensive housing for Veterans; Goodwill Enterprises of Southern Nevada for vocational training and placement, and the UNLV School of Social Work for evaluation of outcome.

Vegas Stronger will be the hub and clearinghouse for facilitating allocation of these various crucial services to those suffering from opioid addiction. We will provide project management services, communications and public relations, fundraising as well as data collection and analysis. Medication delivery will include state of the art non-opioid-based Medication Assisted Treatment with Naltrexone in oral, injectable and implantable versions as well as psychotropics (i.e. generic Abilify, Seroquel, Risperdal, etc.) in oral and injectable versions to address co-occurring needs.

There will be a beta cohort of 100 homeless or sheltered opioid addicts who will be provided detoxification, Naltrexone, rehabilitation therapy, housing, nutrition and access to physical fitness training.

Results will be Measurable, utilizing established metrics and done in HIPAA compliant fashion and in conjunction with the UNLV School of Social Work.

We will ensure results are Achievable with the use of established medication assisted treatment protocols and the help of community partners.

We are certain the desired outcomes are Realistic in that we have established Memorandums of Understanding and Business Associate Agreements with our community partners and both they and the team at Vegas Strong each have a solid history of success.

Lastly, we have established a reasonable Time parameter in which to achieve the initial phase – a six-month period commencing on January 1st, 2020.