When the Southeastern Prevention and Addiction Recovery Resource Center launched in 2021, its leaders aimed to save lives in Robeson County.
Since then, the SPARC program housed at UNC Pembroke has partnered with more than 70 nonprofits, police departments, and local government agencies to provide treatment, early intervention education, and the overdose-reversing medication naloxone.
Now the group is expanding throughout southeastern North Carolina, where many communities have experienced high rates of drug-overdose deaths. The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, which funded SPARC’s launch four years ago, recently gave the group a three-year, $1.05 million grant to create the Southeastern Prevention and Addiction Recovery Resource Center Regional Opioid Consortium. Robeson and five other counties are participating: Bladen, Columbus, Cumberland, Richmond, and Scotland…