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Note From the Office
Happy Holidays and New Year to all from the Office of Addiction and Recovery (OAR). We hope you and yours are having a peaceful end to the year and are feeling energized going into 2025. It has been an eventful final quarter of 2024 for the Office of Addiction and Recovery with progress being made across multiple fronts including improving treatment and recovery opportunities for justice involved individuals, promoting more recovery in more places like the workplace, and ensuring naloxone gets into the hands of those that need it most. OAR has also been active in working with subcabinet agencies on upcoming 2025 legislative proposals.
Over the last few months OAR continued its public engagement work to reduce stigma, educate the public on recovery, and collaborate with our partners. OAR Director Drucker presented at the Annual National Alliance of Mental Illness Conference in November and at the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Resource Initiative (PAARI) quarterly convening in December. In October, members of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Opioids, Substance Use, and Addiction, supported by OAR, tabled at the Minnesota Association of Resources for Recovery and Chemical Health (MARRCH) annual conference and surveyed participants regarding priorities for the upcoming legislative session.
The New Year will bring new challenges and opportunities for the recovery community, and OAR remains committed to working in collaboration with the many great partners across disciplines, governments, communities, regions of the state, and providers to ensure that Minnesota is doing all it can to promote recovery for all our residents.
News and updates
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 Brandy Brink and Beth Elstad
Governor’s Advisory Council
This month the Governor’s Advisory Council on Opioids, Substance Use, and Addiction held their final meeting of the year where they finalized their legislative recommendations for 2025. Also, at that meeting, inaugural chair Beth Elstad of Duluth announced she was stepping down to pursue additional professional opportunities. Beth was a strong and positive chair, bringing grace, energy, compassion, and a collaborative spirit to the work. She was instrumental in getting the Council off the ground. We are deeply indebted to her for all her many contributions, and she will always be a friend of OAR. Per statute, the Governor will appoint the next chair over the coming weeks. Additionally, there are two open seats for the Council. Interested applicants can apply at the Secretary of State’s Website.
1115 Reentry Waiver
Legislation passed in 2024 directing Minnesota to apply for and implement an 1115 Reentry Waiver that would allow the state to leverage Medicaid (a state/federal partnership providing significant funding) to pay for behavioral health needs of incarcerated Minnesotans. Over the past several months the Departments of Human Services and Corrections have been working diligently to prepare the application to the federal government. The draft 1115 Reentry Waiver application was put out for public comment last month and this month DHS convened the first meeting of a workgroup including partners across the local government, law enforcement, Tribes, providers, and community partners, that will provide feedback as the application goes through the federal approval process as well as on eventual implementation of the waiver. The application can be found on the Department of Human Services website.
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 Naloxone Saturation Strategy
The Office of Addiction and Recovery, in partnership with DHS and MDH, is continuing to refine a naloxone saturation strategy. This strategy’s objective is to lay out a framework for ensuring that every community in Minnesota gets naloxone in the format and quantity they need to prevent overdose deaths. The strategy is the result of many months of engagement with harm reduction, local government, Tribal, and law enforcement. The draft strategy was reviewed by partners at a Nov. 22 virtual convening and the state team is now compiling that feedback and incorporating it in a final draft.
 Proposed New Rules for Jails
Earlier in December the Department of Corrections (DOC) released proposed new rules for jails mandating minimum standards of care, including substance use disorder treatment and medicines for opioid use disorder (MOUD). Both the Governor’s Advisory Council and MOUD in Jails workgroup convened by OAR provided feedback to DOC during an earlier phase of the rulemaking process and the proposed rules will continue to be revised as they go through the rulemaking process. Interested parties can find the proposed rules on the Department of Corrections Website.
Office of Addiction and Recovery - Monthly update
Beginning in January 2025, the Office of Addiction and Recovery will hold a monthly webinar to provide updates from the office, state partner agencies, and community partners.
All updates will take place virtually on the last Wednesday of the month from 11:00 a.m. to 12 noon.
Please mark your calendas now for the first session on Wednesday, January 29.
Web Ex link to join the session.
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