Utah State University Extension’s HEART Initiative and Tribal & Rural Opioid Initiative are hosting the 2023 Rural Opioid and Stimulant Wellness Summit on October 25 and October 26 at the USU Eastern Campus. Castle Country Radio was able to sit down with Dr. Ashley Yaugher to get all the details about the conference.

The workshops will be dealing with opioids which Carbon and Emery Counties are both very familiar with that issue but this time around the summit will cover stimulants.  “This is actually the sixth annual summit that we are doing for our rural Utahans. We’ve always focused on opioids, which includes things like the traditional opiates, Vicodin, and heroin, right, those kinds of things but this year we also wanted to include psycho-stimulants in the discussions. Because we are seeing more and more people who are overdosing and using multiply substances. So opioids and stimulants are often used together,” said Dr. Yaugher. Stimulants can include any type of amphetamine or cocaine, both are very common stimulants.

The summit is all about supporting substance use disorder recovery, prevention, and harm reduction in rural communities. “We’ll also talk about prevention of substance use disorders. We’ll talk about evidence-based treatments, and we’ll talk about recovery efforts and what works well to help people in recovery, into recovery, and maintain long term recovery,” said Dr. Yaugher. Officials know that recovery from substance use is possible and treatment does work, and preventions is effective and that is why sharing this information with individuals is very important to the community’s well-being.

This topic is so important that the summit is offering community scholarships to waive the workshop registration fee of $100.00. “We wanted to make sure that all community members interested, like you said, get a registration stipend. So we are happy to waive people’s fee to attend the summit. All they have to do is email usuheart@gmail.com and they will get free registration which includes meals, swag, all these educational opportunities that I briefly mentioned and more,” explained Dr. Yaugher. Once you send the email for the summit scholarship, they will send you a promo code to complete the registration process on https://www.eventbrite.com/

This year’s event theme, “Open Roads to Health and Wellness: Providing rural communities with many pathways to build strong and healthy families,” reflects the organizers’ commitment to sharing ideas, strategies, and best practices to address the opioid and stimulant epidemic.

To register for the event visit https://www.eventbrite.com/