Gateway Foundation February Updates

Contents

Letter from the CEO – Tom Britton
Staff Highlight – Dr. Roueen Rafeyan
Featured Alumna –Cheryl
Be in the Know – New Outcomes Research
Gateway in the News
Coming Soon – Annual Dinner Event

Happy New Year to all of you – our dedicated stakeholders and supporters. We start the new calendar year with excitement and gratitude for recent grant and contract awards, which are expanding our reach across several of our programs in different states.

Last quarter we were awarded additional federal funds to increase program services in Illinois, Missouri and Delaware. In Illinois, our evidence-based “warm hand-off” model has been implemented in select hospitals since September 2017, thanks to the funding support of the Illinois Department of Health Services. Through this program, we have seen close to 900 patients to date and have referred 93 percent of them to treatment programs throughout Chicagoland. Our success has resulted in awards that are allowing us to integrate even more hospitals in the Chicagoland area as well as central Illinois. These new resources will also enable us to expand transitional support services to individuals in re-entry programs in central and southern Illinois counties using Medication-Assisted Treatment and other evidence-based treatments. We expect to continue this success as we reach even more people in need. You will see our impact highlighted in the “In the News” section of this newsletter and can read more about the larger impact of our work in our 2018 Annual Report.

In Missouri, we are proud to share that a contract award has positioned Gateway Foundation as a leader in the St. Louis Engaging Patients in Care Coordination (EPICC) program, with the additional responsibility of providing clinical supervision for the entire team of engagement specialists working with targeted hospitals to address the opioid epidemic. And on the East Coast, we were recently awarded a grant to provide cognitive behavioral therapy throughout Delaware, which will give us a chance to expand into new areas in the state.

In this issue we hope you will learn more about life-saving Addiction Medicine from our outcomes and one of our experts, Dr. Roueen Rafeyan, our chief medical officer. We are looking forward to the new opportunities 2019 will bring to help us save as many lives as possible.

"For me, when I undertake care of a patient who is at the lowest point in their lives – physically, mentally, financially, socially – and I work with them and their families to gradually bring them back to living a meaningful, productive life, that’s the biggest reward anyone can get."

Dr. Roueen Rafeyan has worked as chief medical officer of Gateway Foundation for more than two years and has been a trailblazer in the field of Addiction Medicine for over 20, having served as a medical director for psychiatric and substance use programs at leading Illinois healthcare institutions including Rush, Michael Reese, Resurrection and Presence Behavioral Health.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS THE MOST CHALLENGING PART OF YOUR JOB AT GATEWAY AND YOUR WORK OVERALL?
There are a number of challenges… Fighting the public stigma against addiction. Getting fellow colleagues and physicians to understand addiction as a disease rather than a lifestyle choice. Providing treatment to everyone who is in need of it is a challenge because there are so many patients out there who are in need of treatment but, for various reasons, there are barriers preventing them from getting into treatment.

Read more about Dr. Rafeyan and his thoughts on the future of the field and careers at Gateway Foundation.

A 30 pack of beer and a bottle of Bacardi every day was Cheryl’s norm for 22 years. After experiencing emotional and physical pain at a young age, Cheryl found solace in alcohol, which helped her escape her family reality and fit in with those around her. Cheryl’s alcohol addiction had taken hold by age 17.

Cheryl went on to receive 19 DUIs and eventually was sent to jail. Yet the binges continued. She was in and out of the system for years, moving to nine different states, until she spent 30 days in jail. It was during this time that she learned about Gateway Foundation and finally admitted she could no longer outrun herself.

“I needed to change, I needed to do something, I wanted to get sober.” Read more of Cheryl's story.

Be in the Know

The only way to continue improving our model is to understand which aspects are most significantly influencing the lives of our patients. For this reason, we requested an independent research evaluation by the OMNI Institute research group.

Not only were our abstinence rates for certain substances, like opioids, greater than industry norms, key indicators of health and well-being also increased significantly following 12 months – when rates of relapse are the highest – after admission to a Gateway Foundation program. Read more about our new outcomes research.

Gateway warm hand-off program fills gap between hospital and addiction help for opioid patients, in Daily Herald.

Gateway Carbondale executive director discusses rise of drug overdoses in southern Illinois.

Gateway alumna Lucy shares battle with an alcohol use disorder on NBC 5 Chicago.

This September, for Recovery Month, Gateway Foundation will be hosting our annual dinner and honoring champions of recovery.

Be on the lookout for a Save The Date!