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Reach Mobile Health Services
Admissions Information:
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Address: 2104 Maryland Avenue, Baltimore, MD Phone: (410) 752-6080 Fax: Email: Website: Services: Outpatient substance abuse treatment, Detoxification, Methadone Maintenance for persons with co-occurring mental and substance abuse disorders, persons with HIV/AIDS, pregnant/postpartum women, women, criminal justice clients
Location: MAP
ABOUT
REACH Mobile Health ServicesREACH is a state-certified opioid agonist treatment program in metropolitan Baltimore. The program began 14 years ago as a NIDA-funded demonstration project led by the distinguished behavioral psychologist, Dr. Joseph Brady (Brady et al., 1993, 1994, 1997; Greenfield, et al., 1996).
Dr. Brady, Professor of Behavioral Psychology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a NIDA MERIT award recipient, was able to continue REACH’s operation long after NIDA’s original research funding ended through a combination of service grants and fee-for-service billing. Although counseling services are provided in a permanent location, the program is unique in that it operates two mobile vans that dispense methadone at locations around the city of Baltimore and serves as a model program for expanded methadone services delivery.
The program serves 600 opioid dependent adult patients; 44% are women, 87% are African-American and 13% are Caucasian. About 30% are concurrently cocaine dependent and 11% have alcohol problems.
REACH routinely provides at least one hour per week of group and one hour of individual counseling bi-weekly. Adult counseling is most often based on cognitive behavioral therapy and case management techniques. All patients receive TB and HIV assessment and risk-reduction counseling. The program provides on-site vocational training and acupuncture. The program has an appropriate complement of medical and nursing staff. It employs 16 experienced full-time counselors, 38% of whom currently hold master’s degrees. The caseload averages about 40 per counselor.
Program leadership over the past 7 years has been provided by Carol Butler. An experienced administrator with 32 years of experience in the field, Ms. Butler was formerly director of the Sinai Hospital’s methadone program for 25 years. Ms. Butler has been a national board member of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence for the past 11 years. She also provides technical assistance on mobile methadone service delivery to other treatment programs throughout the nation.
REACH has been involved with research from its inception as a NIDA-funded research demonstration project. The program subsequently collaborated with the Mid-Atlantic Co-PI, Robert Schwartz, in a project designed to demonstrate the ability of a mobile unit to supply medication services to fixed-site drug-free outpatient psychosocial counseling clinics (Kuo, et al., 2003).
REACH was recently the site of a NIDA-funded research study of Interim Methadone Treatment, which demonstrated the ability of interim treatment to increase treatment entry and reduce heroin use (Schwartz, et al., 2004). This study led to a $1 million grant award from CSAT to expand interim methadone treatment in Baltimore. REACH was included in a multi-site study of Baltimore treatment outcomes (Johnson, et al., 2003). Finally, the program participated in a CSAT-funded study that demonstrated the value of methadone treatment for probationers.
Although REACH has not yet served as a site of a CTN study, it is well-positioned for such participation with its strong leadership, solid data management system, climate that supports research, and successful track record of implementing previous research efforts.
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