Welcome Letter from William M. Denihan, CEO, ADAMHS Board of Cuyahoga County 2016 UMADAOP State Conference- Submitted September 14, 2016 The ADAMHS Board of Cuyahoga CountyWelcomes You to Cleveland Welcome to the beautiful city of Cleveland, Ohio.
Congratulations to The Urban Minority Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Outreach Programs (UMADAOP) of Ohio, and all its chapters, for hosting the 27th Annual UMADAOP Conference. The theme of this year’s event: We Will Build Drug Free, Strong Children, Strong Families and Strong Communities, is significantly appropriate as the City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and the State of Ohio begin to build a new conversation and implement change in our mental health and addiction recovery support system. Our evolving City has experienced many accomplishments this year including successfully hosting the Republican National Convention 12
and celebrating the Cleveland Cavaliers National Championship with hometown hero Lebron James. We can’t build apartment buildings fast enough and millennials are coming back home to work. Our local communities and mental health and addiction recovery support system are building bridges to improve the quality of life for our clients. As an example, the Mental Health Response Advisory Committee was formed as part of settlement agreement between The U.S. Department of Justice and the City of Cleveland. We are pleased with the progress we have made so far—working to build a stronger community system to treat individuals living with mental illness and substance use disorders with respect and improve access to treatment and recovery resources. In Cuyahoga County, heroin deaths continue to rise and with fentanyl now in our community with a vengeance, deaths by overdose are staggering. Deaths by heroin overdose have increased from 161 in 2012, to 199 in 2013, to 275 in 2015. In 2016, with the onset of fentanyl, we have seen 316 overdose deaths in the eight months of the year. If this startling rate of death continues on this path, we can expect more than 500 individuals to die from a heroin or fentanyl overdose by the end of 2016 – and that is just here in Cuyahoga County. We have advanced from an epidemic to a tsunami.
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