SMART News

SMART’s Program Coordinator Jeremy Kourvelas presented to the Tennessee Public Health Association (TPHA) on best practices relating to using local data to inform decisions, covering:

Jefferson County was awarded Excellence in the Application of the Opioid Litigation Principles by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for using the following evidence-based principles in helping guide the effective spending of their settlement dollars:

Please join our regional substance use response consultants for free technical assistance and guidance on matters related to the opioid settlements during their quarterly office hours on August 14 from 9:00-11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, 8:00-10:00 Central Time.

Register here for this free session.

Cities and counties, please note that an important September reporting deadline is right around the corner. Our consultants are here to help!

SMART's Courtney Collier, our West Tennessee Substance Use Response Consultant, attended the inaugural meeting of the Madison County opioid abatement council and was interviewed by local media station WBBJ.  View the article and television clip.

A slight correction, however: Courtney is incorrectly identified as part of UT Martin's staff, when he is, in fact, from the UT Institute for Public Service SMART Initiative.

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A cop, a guitar company and a public health analyst walk into a bar…and mount an opioid overdose first aid kit to the wall.

On May 21, the New York Times published an article titled “Has Fentanyl Peaked?” The premise is that the “opioid crisis…may finally be turning around” based on the fact that preliminary data from the CDC shows that drug overdose deaths slightly declined in 2023, now down to 107,543 estimated deaths (or about the equivalent of a plane crash every single week).

"One of his partners in that effort was Trevor Henderson, the former director of Metro Public Health’s Overdose Response Program who is now working as a substance use response consultant with the University of Tennessee’s SMART Initiative—or Substance Misuse and Addiction Resource for Tennessee. A year or so ago, Henderson said he stumbled upon an initiative from Gibson Gives, the charitable arm of Gibson guitars.

SMART’s Middle Tennessee substance use response consultant, Trevor Henderson, was honored by the Department of Justice with the 2024 Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement for his work in his previous role as the Director of the Opioid/Overdose Response and Reduction Program at the Nashville Metro Public Health Department.

Watch this documentary on the stigma of substance use during pregnancy, masterfully produced by ETSU’s Dr. Kelly Moore, funded by the Tennessee Department of Health.

Featured are mothers in recovery and several experts across the state, including SMART Executive Director Dr. Jennifer Tourville and friends of SMART Dr. Stephen Loyd, Judge Duane Slone and more.

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Naloxone. Access to treatment. Housing. Employment. Educational opportunities. We’re used to hearing about the need for these aspects of recovery. But what about community? A place to gather with others, especially those with similar experiences? That’s where recovery community centers come in.