SMART Policy Podcast
Podcast by the UT SMART Initiative. Host Jeremy Kourvelas speaks with experts from across the recovery ecosystem - representing healthcare, prevention, law enforcement and more - about local, state and federal drug policy to find out what is and isn't working to make this fight against addiction a little easier.
SMART Policy Podcast
Uplift Appalachia: Equipping and Empowering the Church to Support Recovery
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You're listening to the Smart Policy Podcast, a production of the University of Tennessee's Institute for Public Service. You've been released from jail, where you'd been spending some time for possession of narcotics. In jail, you got sober, and you were lucky. Your jail had programs available that helped start you down a path of long-term mental and physical well-being. But you still have cravings. They gnaw at you as you return to the outside world. You manage to find a job and a place to stay, and you're starting to build a new life. But you don't have a car. It was impounded when you were incarcerated, and you can't afford to get a new one. And you have a court date in the next town over, and the only bus takes that route once a day. Meaning that you're going to have to make sure you can take off work, even if you can't really afford to do so. And those cravings are still there at the back of your mind. This is the kind of dilemma that faces many people in Tennessee. Staying in recovery while trying to rebuild a life, but resources are limited and local public transportation is not reliable or readily available. This has been identified in dozens of needs assessments across the state as a major barrier to recovery.
SPEAKER_01And we know that one of the biggest factors keeping people stuck in addiction, stuck kind of in that same cycle, is lack of access to transportation.
SPEAKER_02This is where many people believe that the church can have a massive impact. And the antenna Clements of Uplift Appalachia think so too. For a few years now, their church and others they have mentored have provided transportation to courts, recovery meetings, job trainings, and more, with the goal of helping people not only survive, but to thrive.
SPEAKER_00And I used to fight saying, it's not a program. It's just a way of being, and you're having relationships with people. It's like, well, how do I do it? It's like, do you see some one that needs a ride? Offer them a ride.
SPEAKER_02Uplift Appalachia provides education, training, consulting, and connecting to churches and organizations, motivating and equipping them to love and serve those living with addictions, mental health, and other life challenges on their journey to flourishing. They also have a three-year grant to cross-train faith, health, and social service communities about addiction and trauma.
SPEAKER_00The faith community and the clinical community and the science community were just not speaking the same language. And we said, what if we teach everybody the same language?
SPEAKER_02As always, this episode is intended to be educational. Any opinions, reviews, or specific language presented in this episode does not reflect the opinion of the University of Tennessee. Also, we recorded this episode on November 11th before the government reopened. So later on in the episode when we discussed the government shutdown, do be advised that it was recorded before that concluded. Lastly, the SMART initiative at the UT Institute for Public Service empowers communities to overcome the overdose crisis and build a healthier tennis where individuals impacted by substance use can thrive. Our annual week of giving is December 15th through 19th, wherein we will be accepting charitable donations that are matched up to $15,000. Your gift would support ongoing zero-cost training and technical assistance to local governments and community partners to implement evidence-based opioid abatement strategies, continued development of interactive mapping of recovery resources across the state, and research, analysis, education, and outreach on substance use prevention, mitigation, and other health initiatives. Visit giving.tennasty.edu slash smart to donate or contact Kristen Davit at 865-974-9609 or at Kristen.davitz at Tennessee.edu. And that's Kristen with an E. Thank you for your consideration and support.
SPEAKER_00I am Andy Clement. I am a professor at ECSU. I'm a psychology professor. I also am an associate director in a research institute where we study and train on adverse childhood experiences and trauma and resilience and so forth. Also, I am president and one of the co-founders of Uplift Appalachia. So I describe myself as a Venn diagram. My big thing is whatever I can do to solve addiction.
SPEAKER_01I'm Tanner Clements. I am the executive director for Uplift Appalachia. My background is all over the place. I have a degree in digital media. I have a background in doing web and video. So lots of different kinds of storytelling there. I was a pastor for a small church plant here in Johnson City, Tennessee for about eight and a half years, where we kind of co-developed our passion for serving people struggling with addiction because that was the people that we we were really connecting with and getting to know. And then I left my job at ETSU, where I was working, doing the video and that sort of thing about two and a half, three years ago to work full-time with Uplift. We we started Uplift in 2019. And what we're trying to do is mobilize and equip the church to respond to people struggling with addiction, finding recovery, mental health challenges, kind of whatever that looks like, uh, because we think that human connection is going to be the biggest factor for helping people not just find stability, but actually live a life of flourishing beyond their addiction or whatever their current mental health struggles might be. And we think that an intrinsically motivated, so a church that wants to help people because of their value system that their whole practice is built around, we think that an intrinsically motivated church is going to be the most effective method for delivering the kind of life that leads to flourishing. And so that's what we do is we we motivate and then we equip churches with the knowledge that they need to understand addiction and recovery and trauma and adversity and all of these sorts of things.
SPEAKER_00He left out two things. I'm his mom. Names are the same. And he also has uh an MD, an MDiv. He didn't just decide to become a pastor, he actually got trapped.
SPEAKER_01I didn't just happen upon it. I got the degree too. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, those are some uh uh pretty uh not only I think crucial details, but interesting ones. Uh it's it's nice to see that sort of family connection here. I noticed there y'all aren't the only Clements involved in this process either.
SPEAKER_01Uh they're everywhere. There are a lot of us. We got my wife does a lot of our bookkeeping, but also she's you know my right hand in in everything that I'm doing. My dad is he's the one who gets a lot of our our stuff done. Like we logistics stuff, setting things up, coordinating with folks, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_02So I wanted to quickly mention you're you have you're a podcast of your own. I've listened to uh a number of episodes, and we're going to be linking to it in the show notes. The title is intrinsically motivated, which appears to be the core philosophy behind what's happening with uplift Appalachia. Uh, I come from a psychology background myself. And uh uh it's it's a term I recognize from that field. Was was there some overlap there? Because I I have noticed, especially when you have guests on from a more public health or medical background, there does seem to be quite a lot of overlap uh in in some of the thinking, which is really fascinating to me. Uh what was that a direct connection?
SPEAKER_01Well, no, I was gonna no, I'm thinking I I would say I can't avoid a direct overlap with psychology. I was raised in the house with a psychologist.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01But I think a lot of what I have found is that that word just perfectly seems to describe what again, I tend to come from kind of that pastoral perspective. That seems to be what the Bible tends to call churches too. It's like if you believe these things, if you love the if you love me, if you like you will naturally want to do X, Y, Z. And so I think a lot of what my hope is, is that I'm not we're not reinventing the wheel here. We're not coming up with something brand new, but rather we're saying these are the things that you know, and I want to direct those in a way that's gonna be a lot more appropriate for helping people in a larger scale, if we can just kind of refocus you and get your motivations in the right place.
SPEAKER_00We look toward, and and any of us that play in the grant world anywhere, we look toward sustainability, sustainability. And if we can get people to for whatever they're doing to be intrinsically motivated, doing it because of what's inside of them and internal, and I've just got to, that is far more sustainable than continuing to either pay people or coerce people or make billboards for people. If if it's like part of them, that is going to be much more sustainable and genuine.
SPEAKER_02The latest conversation in this space has been about how we can best engage the faith communities, which in Tennessee are rich and numerous uh and everywhere. Uh, and when I say rich, I mean I mean uh in many, many ways, not just uh monetarily, of course, uh rich in in philosophy and ethics and community connections, uh, as well as resources, but uh the community being the key aspect there. Uh a recent guest of ours said churches could help with the transportation problem uh if they wanted to. And looks like that's something y'all want to do. Uh I was wondering if you could quickly talk on the transportation side of Uplift Appalachia.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that honestly is what kind of motivated us to start the organization to begin with. We were trying to figure out what is the way that we can get the church motivated, get the church equipped. What is what is the what because we could we could say you need to do something, but if we don't have something to suggest, even if that's not where people end up, uh we don't have something to suggest, we're just kind of crying out in the wilderness. And so what we realized, because we were at our, like I said, we had a small church plant in downtown Johnson City for about eight and a half years. We were never more than 30, 35 people. I mean, we were very small, but we were kind of the bullseye between the VA here in Johnson City, all the government housing here in Johnson City, and all of the government services. So we had a lot of foot traffic between all of those places, but that was also a lot of people that we were building relationships with that didn't have access to transportation. And we know that one of the biggest factors keeping people stuck in addiction stuff, kind of in that same cycle, is lack of access to transportation. There are lots of cities that have better access to transportation here in the Tri-Cities, it's not great. It's gotten a little bit better, but for example, there's one bus a day that runs from downtown Johnson City to the next town over where the actual county courthouse is. So anybody that has court appointments to make, they have to give up either a whole day of work or they have to find childcare or they have to, you know, miss their court appointment to keep their job, to maybe keep their kids. So it's like this this cycle that people are trapped in. And so what we were realizing is there has to be a way for the church to respond to that. And what we looked at our church, we saw that half of our church was already giving rides to the other half of our church. And in doing so, not only were people getting to the church, but relationships were being built that were leading to more rides happening outside of the church, but also the connection between the people giving the rides and getting the rides was leading to some pretty remarkable life change in both people. The people that were offering their time to give the ride were being just as affected as the people who were getting from one place to another, and they were helping develop a new trust and community for people that maybe had not gotten to experience, you know, consistent community, consistent connection, consistent desire to seek somebody else's good. Uh, and that was that was really remarkable. And we said, well, why couldn't we just replicate that? And so when we when we started uplift, we came it, it is it is intentionally a playoff the word lift, like to give somebody a lift, but also to lift them up, you know, kind of out of whatever it is that they are, you know, trapped in. And so that's kind of what got us started, and that led us down this path of discovering not only how can we provide a practical solution to a real problem, but also helped us realize what are the factors, the barriers that are preventing churches or the faith community from wanting to get involved and how can we help address, you know, removing the fear, removing the mystery to getting involved in this sort of work.
SPEAKER_02All right, I notice a connection with caring workplaces. Uh, this is something we've engaged with them ourselves in a number of facets, uh, also in partnership with ETSU. Uh, for those in the audience not familiar, caring workplaces being a recovery-friendly workforce development project by the first Tennessee Development District and a partnership with Ballot Health to uh staff, uh peer recovery uh specialists to help provide those wraparound services as well as as the uh workplace development aspects of things. So uh I see you're providing transportation for them too, the people who've been incarcerated to get job skills training. That seems a really critical aspect. You've uh mentioned in prior appearances on uh in other locations, including your own show, that workforce development was a key uh passion of yours.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love the the partnership that we have. The whole caring workplaces team is um we have caring workplaces, which was already a uh second chance employment development, we've got ETSU, we've got Valid Health providing peer services, we've got evaluators, we've got, but then we've also got recovery resources, which is sober living housing here. They have several sober living um houses in three towns, I guess, right now, and then um uplift as the transportation. It's been able to connect a lot of dots, and we've all worked well together around that. But the thing that I'm so thankful for is first as a city development district has wanted to fund our brilliant idea for years and years. It's like we've worked together on finding grants and so forth, and people kept saying we would love to do this transportation thing. If you get it going, we'll fund it. If you get it going, we'll fund it. It's like we can't get it going if we don't have funding to get it going. And I see them as having taken a chance on it, and it has been remarkable, a game changer, and tell them all the wonderful things that are happening.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and so what that really has looked like for us has been we develop volunteer drivers. Sometimes we drive ourselves. I still get to drive some, and I I love it every time I get to. Uh, it's it's it's allowed us to hire a transportation coordinator who's actually the person getting everything done that we want to do. We're we we really enjoy getting to talk about the things, but but our transportation coordinator, Caitlin, is the the the best decision, the best hire we ever made because she has she she was hired January 2nd this year, and then she found out two days later she had to staff eight rides a week for 12 guys, and she immediately jumped in. She started driving, she got volunteers that we'd already been working with ready to go. And so now, uh depending on the time of year, we offer between eight and sixteen rides uh a week, split among a bunch of different volunteers, and sometimes that's driving and picking up one guy in one town and driving him to Tennessee College of Applied Technology training in another town, and then picking him up in the afternoon and taking him home. And then sometimes that's picking up four or five guys in Kingsport, driving him to Johnson City for three hours of just job certification training, you know, torque training or OSHA training, things like that, to where these guys can get, you know, some job skills built up so that they can try to find that long-term job, that long-term solution. But what's really been cool about this is not only that they're getting the wraparound services that they need in kind of that technical sense, right? They're not it's not just they're getting from their house to job training or back home or you know, to a job themselves, or to a recovery meeting, or whatever that looks like. Those are those wraparound services are important, but they're also now developing a community with people who are actually wrapping around them when tough times come too.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Uh, when when the the reality of life hits, they also now have a few new trusted relationships that they can kind of rely on, whether that's hey, I might be able to get a car, but I need some help getting it repaired, or hey, I need somebody to help pick me up and go get my kid from school this day, or whatever. And now they have a new group of people, and and our volunteers, we when we talk to them, we say, we would like for you to volunteer to do this one ride. But if you build a relationship and you want to continue to support people outside of that, you know, we're all for that. That's what we're hoping this builds to. This is an easy way to get in, but but building those kind of long-term relationships and that support system for folks outside of that is just as important to us. We we we've been tracking different numbers, and I've been trying to put it in perspective for people. I know in the month of March, our volunteers drove enough to go from Savannah, Georgia to San Francisco. Um, that's just the amount of time that people were in the cars with people, and it was just that's also that amount of driving, talking to people and building connections and and really making a meaningful impact in somebody's life, which has been really cool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. And I believe y'all said, or or perhaps you've had guests say this, that those are central ingredients to effective ministry anyway, right? Uh that providing those hands-on community-building uh services. Uh, and when we say services, it's just being in being a person to another person, right? Right, right.
SPEAKER_00And that is the thing, you know, people will ask us at times, so tell me about this program. And I used to fight saying, it's not a program, it's just a way of being, and you're having relationships with people. It's like, well, how do I do it? It's like, do you see some that one that needs a ride? Offer them a ride.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00There you go. So, like for this, we have to track it. But but we hope that gradually this happens everywhere and we don't even know about it, that it's just such a natural part of what people are doing, that it's just happening.
SPEAKER_01Having the structure of the program has really given people the opportunity to kind of you know dip a toe in the water, see what it's like, see that it can be an effective form of serving somebody. And then once it kind of the the process is demystified for them, then they're ready to go. And and that's what we've seen is people just continuing to jump in and and keep running with it.
SPEAKER_02Andy, I believe uh you likened this to being sourdough starter. Uh, that you're you're spreading sourdough starter around the around the state, maybe even the country, for other people to now make their own bread out of. I I I'm sorry, I I know it was a silly moment in your show, but I really loved it. I I thought that was a perfect metaphor.
SPEAKER_00See, and I don't even remember it, but that's okay. It's brilliant.
SPEAKER_01Um you obviously said it.
SPEAKER_00I obviously said it. Right, right, right, right. And just a shout out, I've just pulled up our most recent report. So January to October, we have driven 114 people 22,000 miles.
unknownGod.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's mind-blowing. It's mind blowing.
SPEAKER_02It really is. Uh and speaking of partnerships, uh, you uh also have a an additional partnership with uh ETSU Ballot Health Strong Brain Institute to cross-train faith, health, and social service communities about addiction and trauma. Uh three-year grant. I I'd love to learn about this because this seems like a really you're speaking a sourdough starter, right? You know, if you're spreading around the message and the plan, I won't I won't, I won't bear, I won't beat that metaphor into the ground, I promise.
SPEAKER_00No, it's okay. Um yeah, and that one is again, I always tell people I either if I get frustrated with something, I usually write an article or a grant. Um, and so this one is an article and a grant. And so um and so what happened was we were we were trying to equip equip the faith community. And we had an instance a couple of years ago where we had a church been trained, they were ready to work with a clinic for drug-exposed children that was ready to have volunteers and we were gonna do meals with them. They they had they had done one meal, and it's like we used to do that in our church. What if the church people came and just either provided the meal or came and shared the meal with um, they were trying to get their parents involved in um in some other community because when people get sober, they tend to leave their using community and they may have a vacuum there. And so the church was right next to the clinic. It's like this is a match made in heaven, let's do this. Everyone was on board. We had the first meal, was amazing, amazing. Got ready for the second meal, and the administrators learned of this thing going on and um said, Oh no, no, regular civilians can't be in clinic spaces. That that can't happen because they need, you know, bloodborne pathogen training and HIPAA training and whatever. And I said, This is for a grandma to eat a pie with a mom. And it's like, so three months of lawyers meeting together to find out that, oh, wait, yes, indeed, they can, it's fine. But you know, you lose three months. Um, but what we had found was that that the faith community and the clinical community and the science community were just not speaking the same language. And we said, what if we teach everybody the same language? And that is what that's what that so there's an article on this that I'll be glad to share with you for your show notes about getting the communities. To talk with each other. But what we do in our trainings is we no matter who we're teaching, we do teach the faith community, we teach the clinical community, we teach community organizations, whatever, but we infuse the here is what clinics are facing information in the church trainings, and here is what the church members are learning in the community training, so that and we and we go back to the um SAMHSA, like when we teach trauma-informed principles, we use the SAMHSA language, is what everybody's learning wherever they are, you know. And but we have to pat it for different audiences. It's like really, this isn't psychological hoo-e when we're talking to the faith community, and we say this isn't Bible thumping when we talk to the clinical community. We just are open about all of it. And hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, everyone can begin to speak the same language. And we're willing to keep coaching and interpreting and liaising as we need to.
SPEAKER_02There's a lot of accusations that churches have provided barriers to expanding access to treatment and services. But we see many examples already in in Tennessee of many churches stepping up and opening up access, just like we've talked about with transportation here. I guess I would like a little bit more insight on the conversation because usually when that dialogue is occurring, it seems very one-sided. Either churches aren't the problem or churches can save everything. Uh, but it I suspect that this conversation is related to getting everybody on the same page, speaking the same language, medical, legal, social, faith-based, et cetera.
SPEAKER_01All of that involved. And and and you're you're touching on a lot of the things that we're kind of working through at the same time right now. Um, because you you know, you kind of use the the the big buzzword, and and I'm tired of this as a buzzword, but it says what we're talking about. We use the word stigma all the time.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01We talk about stigma toward people who are struggling with addiction, but there's also stigma from people who are not in the faith community toward the faith community. And there's stigma from people in the faith community toward the science in the medical community, or people that are struggling with addictions. And all of these, all of these things are basically providing this either siloed response where we just kind of get in our own space and we think only us, only us, we're the only way. Uh, and and a lot of what we try to do, and this kind of goes to trying to provide that common language, but more specifically try to provide common understanding of the perspectives of everybody else that we're trying to get to work together. Um, you know, we talk about doing trauma-informed care training. So much of trauma-informed care training is understanding that there are motivations from people's pasts that are leading to the place that they are, the actions that they're taking, the things that they're saying. And that's not just true with people who are struggling with addiction or who are finding themselves in incarceration, but somebody in the medical community could have had a bad experience with the faith community in the past. Somebody in the faith community could have been given bad advice from someone in the medical community in the past. And so now there are new barriers that were built because of the things that they've experienced. But if we're going to really holistically approach this in a way that's gonna really lead to people's flourishing, we got to figure out what are the best things that everybody who cares has to offer, and how can we kind of get those things to work together? Um, and so we see that specifically, and and we've now begun to work a lot more of this kind of language into our trainings. Um, because you know, one of the things that that the, you know, if you look at it from the medical perspective, we'd say, here's how our brains change when we're using this this substance, and here's how our body changes when we use this over time. Well, I can give a really strong biblical case for how to the faith community our bodies respond these ways because they were designed to function in here's the ideal sense, and here's what it says is gonna happen if you don't work in the ideal sense. And so, you know, I can give a really um, I think, sound biblical explanation to the faith community, but at the same time, I can explain to somebody who's only looking at it from the science side why he why he or she should value the perspective of the faith community, why he should see them as wanting to be kind of in a voluntary, altruistic sort of way because of somebody's belief system, right? An effective meaning, because if we're gonna say the human connection, human interaction still matters, they're offering it, and let's take advantage of that that is an available option. And so it really is just kind of this focusing on what is the thing that we're actually trying to solve and how can we all kind of work together to get to that point that comes from first acknowledging that those barriers are there and then trying to take the time to understand why those barriers exist in the first place.
SPEAKER_02That point, all trying to solve that problem, I think is key. Because in this conversation, what I never hear is that everybody does want the same result of fewer people dying. You know, no matter what perspective you're coming from or how siloed you might be, everybody does seem to genuinely want the same thing, which is why we've even had previous guests on our show say this is the last political issue that has no uh real partisanship. Maybe some of the policy options might have a more partisan angle to it, but the issue and the need is is really non-political. Andy, I I would love to hear from your perspective coming from psychology. Uh, you know, as as Tanner says, is is there are some excellent points there about disconnect between the two from personal bad experiences. I mean, do you see that sort of thing in your field in general?
SPEAKER_00Um one of the things that I do see that I wanna that I wanna reiterate and and um maybe clarify a little bit is that there has been this emphasis put on um engaging the faith community in the effort. It's like um, and Tanner mentioned a minute ago that there's value in accessing this thing that's already happening, you know, but what has kind of historically occurred has been um the the health community and the treatment community and so forth have gotten together and come up with best practices and you know, evidence-based treatment and all of these things and pamphlets and brochures and and instructions. And it's like, gosh, we need to get to this people. Let's see if the church will give it out with with uh so it's like a conduit, but it's without any sort of understanding that there could be some value added from the tenants of the faith and things like that. And so that was that was what motivated the article that came before the grant was was it's almost like this utilitarian use of the faith community as a as just a dissemination point. Right. And it's like, oh, I've got a rat card, a place for rack cards, come get my rat cards and and have no connection to it. Where what we're trying to do is is integrate those together and and get all of the the best stuff from all of it and put it put it together. But some of the things that that we haven't mentioned yet, but that we really are wrestling through right now is even from the faith community that that stigma side is, and and as a Christian who happens to be a psychologist or a psychologist who happens to be a Christian, whichever one, um, is is I really do straddle these worlds. And you've got part of the faith community saying, How could you? That's that's like from the devil himself. We're we're only Bible, and as soon as you add anything, it's it's it's evil. And you know, versus the psychology side, I'm in a secular psychology department where it's like, oh, that silly person, what does she think that Bible stuff has to do with anything? You know, and it's like it's like you're throwing out lots of babies with lots of bathwater because they go so well together. You know, it's it's like I perfectly see this overlay among them, but being able to develop enough trusting relationships in places to get the message heard before it's rejected is is is hard sometimes. Um, you know, and so yes, I think we have, I think we have a lot of the same, the same. We want good for each other. We want good for the other people. But I think, and Tanner can speak better to this. I think sometimes we end up with the bar too low, you know. Um, and I'm gonna let that just tee you up for raising the bar, lengthening the goal line, whatever you want to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I she she's mixing all of my metaphors for me, which is perfectly acceptable. Uh, one of the things that I I've been kind of wrestling with over the last couple of years is because I don't want to reject to say to the church, we're gonna reject the public health approach or the disease model for addiction. The issue that I tend to see is a lot of times when you're looking at public health, and again, we've already talked about painting with a broad brush. So I know I'm gonna miss some of the nuance in some of this. And and my I don't have a degree in public health, I've just talked to a lot of people that have. Um, you know, but for the most part, in my perspective, what I see with public health is often what is the most effective way that we can help the most people across a wide range of you know situations in the most cost-effective way? You know, how can we how can we reach the biggest number of people to meet their needs? And a lot of times that means that we set the bar for success, we set the goal for success as, well, that person who's struggling with addiction didn't die. And that's good because if that person dies, we can't do anything more for them, right? But my perspective tends to be that if we're gonna actually want to help people long term, that our model should be more built built on flourishing, not just survival. You know, I I say it's one thing for somebody to be alive, it's another thing for somebody to live. Yeah, and so what I want to see happen is the faith community kind of pick up the ball where public health gets people instead of saying this is the finish line, that's now we're we're alive. Now that's that's the starting point where we can help you now build a life beyond the situation that you might have found yourself in. So so we we get kind of set like we're trying to be opposed to medication and all of these things all the time. And we see those as a tool, we see those as a piece, but we also don't see those as the end.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01We see we see something beyond just I'm gonna continue to medicate myself every day for the rest of my life, or I'm gonna go get this prescription, you know, once a week for the next 40, 50 years. We rather would say, how can we help people move beyond the place they are and continue to move forward instead of just kind of be satisfied with what so often is, all right, they're they're now on the checkup list, they're gonna come back for their recurring appointments. We can write them off. That's a success story moving forward, you know. Um, we wanna we don't want to forget those people that have started that recovery journey, but have a lot more that they could be, you know, pushed toward down the line.
SPEAKER_02You know, interestingly enough, the same conversation is, in fact, and you even used terminology from this field, the medical uh I'll call it industry for lack of a better term, has been increasingly talking about the need to get away from this fee for service, cure-based, high-tech solution, you know, one pro like single input, single output. Did we fix the problem? Great. Uh get away from that, which seems to be very expensive and not really leading to satisfactory long-term outcomes, more towards a value-based model, more towards long-term outcomes, innovative solutions, engagement over a very long period of time, in it for the long haul, I think are phrases I've heard you all say on your podcast. Uh so it is interesting to hear the same conversation here. Because yeah, i in in the world of recovery, we've heard that point. You know, grit and loxone, wonderful. We're reducing overdose fatalities, awesome. Uh let's not take our foot off the gas. Agreed. We we we gotta keep people alive, because like you said, you can't further help anybody on earth if they're passed away. Uh but um with that comes this need that are you really just saving a life or just postponing death if you don't actually get them on a w a path to sustainable long-term recovery. And I I this really so many of the things we've talked about already today, as always in these conversations, I think I'm always thinking about how overdoses are a symptom of an underlying disease, and other symptoms may include high homicide and violence rates, uh suicide, um domestic violence, mass shooting, I see as as different symptoms of a similar underlying problem, which seems to be isolation, uh, which seems to be uh you know, disconnect from community, uh a sense of aimlessness, collapse of small towns, uh this sort of thing. You know, that that we're we seem to be losing our communities. Okay. And there's a lot of companies out there that are selling solutions. We have rideshare apps, you know. We have uh look at healthcare, which is which has really become quite a business. Uh I guess I wonder, is the church striving now to reclaim the community that we've piece by piece sold off?
SPEAKER_01We want them to. You use the word reclaim. That's a word we've been using.
SPEAKER_00The big smile was reclaim.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because we uh we've been using the phrase reclaiming recovery to kind of build off of what I was just saying. Reclaiming a new def the the original definition of what it would be to be recovered. Because I talked to a guy, you probably haven't made it all the way through our podcast yet, but you're gonna get to a conversation at some point with a guy named Craig who's who runs Recovery Resources, the organization that we partner with. And and he said, I was given a pill and I was told I was in recovery. And I said, That's funny, I don't feel like I'm in recovery. This feels like the same process that I've been in my whole life. Uh, and that's kind of what we're wanting to see churches reclaim, take back some of that ownership specific to that. And I think this is a really timely place, like this is a great point in uh American history for us to talk about this. Um, I'm actually working on an outline for an episode on our podcast that I'm gonna probably talk about this more. So I'm gonna practice with you first. Uh, is we are coming, I think, out of the longest government shutdown in our nation's history. I think we're coming out of it.
SPEAKER_00Well, yes.
SPEAKER_01But you know, you know, we're supposed to be. We'll see. It's looking like it's gonna happen, but but in that moment, uh, SNAP benefits have been gone now for a bit. And I can speak only in small terms. I can talk about my church and I can talk about some other churches that I've heard that have said, if you are losing your access to food, call us and we will make sure that you have food. And lots of charities, lots of nonprofits have kind of stepped up to say, in to replace what the government has been able to provide, we're gonna step back in. And that's how it always was before all of those benefits were even available. And so I think that is uh a great picture of what I would love to see the church, the faith community doing, even if those benefits come back, even if those benefits continue to be fully funded, I think that ought to be part of what we're doing no matter what. We should reclaim some of that responsibility because it's been too easy for the church to kind of abdicate its responsibility for caring for the poor, for caring for the needy, for caring for the orphans and the widows, as the size of government, the size of government programs has increased. And so uh I think that those exist is not a bad thing. Those things are certainly very helpful, but I would still argue that it's made it so easy for the church to say, we're gonna let them take care of it. They said they would now. We're gonna focus on ourselves, and we've we've kind of lost our way in that. And I think if we can kind of reclaim that responsibility, we've been given a perfect opportunity over the past 40 days to kind of see this should there shouldn't have been a lapse in benefits because we should have been caring for our communities to begin with, to be and and and that should have never it shouldn't have been felt in the same way because, oh, look, the church has already been doing it. This was just kind of supplemental to what the faith community has already been active and doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and one of the things we did a survey when we first started Uplift, even before Uplift started, we were doing, I was doing some surveying of the church's willingness and perception of being ready to help people that are struggling with addiction. And it was, we never found that people were unwilling. They were willing, but the the reasons they gave for not going into it is I might do something wrong. It's a medical problem. We've done a great job of selling it as a medical problem. Um, we should refer them to experts, you know. And so it was like, it was like, I don't know if it was given away or taken away or what, but there was just this this oh, I couldn't begin to do that. And so that's what we're trying to do every time. Anyone that will listen, it's like, you can do this, and this is absolutely us. And where did we give this up? You know? Um, and so so that that's a thing that that drives me is is like the re-empowering of the church to do things that the church has historically done, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's there's a lot to be said about the past hundred years of public policy and community changes. Uh I think a lot of that is probably beyond the scope of the show. Uh, but uh uh suffice to say, I think those are really interesting points that it's not so much an either or it's a we can't lose sight of what we're charged with doing. Yeah, yeah. Uh one one quick thing I wanted to note, I I I uh you know, Andy, you bring to the table uh academic knowledge and prowess in grant writing, article writing. Tanner, you bring significant media skills on top of your education and theology and and the like. And in that vein, it seems kind of perfectly matched for this moment. Uh this is a strange time technologically as well as culturally. And uh I guess what I'm thinking about with this question is when engaging other churches in the hopes of spreading this message and and going out, you I mean, you you're putting out a lot on your website and your social media channels, uh particularly your YouTube. Uh that's clearly gonna have some impact. But in terms of other entities wanting to do this kind of work, what is it like navigating this media landscape right now?
SPEAKER_01Because I that's an interesting question that I haven't thought about.
SPEAKER_02Uh I I asked from the perspective of we have a lot of resources out there, like we've said, and there's silos and they're not talking to each other, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's like because I I I sometimes feel this way too. It's like we'll put something out and we'll watch it, and people that know us will watch it, but how is that helping other people? Right. Um, and I think a lot of a lot of the time because, and this is just kind of the nature of the beast, especially in nonprofit, is you're so busy trying to make look what you're doing look valuable so that you can continue to get funding for it. And I hate that. Well, it's I hate that I'm like we are we are currently grant funded for the next few years, but in the back of my mind, it's like if we're gonna keep doing this, we have to keep looking like we're we're worth investing in. And I I I I hate that that's the place that we find ourselves in. We'd love it if the church would see the value in it and just be like, we're gonna continue to keep funding you to help more churches kind of find this, that sort of thing. But yeah, in this in this place where it's like there's so much content out there, it's so easy to you know get lost in the algorithm. Thing is, we need to be, you know, kind of aware of what the best ways of communicating with people are. But what we keep finding is the most effective ways of really connecting with people is face-to-face. And that's hard to do when we're in such a distant place. Um, but if we can have an actual conversation with some this is why this is and this this is a perfect example of why we think our ride model is so good. Because it's not like a ride share app. It's not you come use your phone, ask for an uplift driver to come pick you up, you hop in the back seat of their car, and then you pull out your phone and you never have a conversation. This is more you come hop in the front seat of my car with me, and then you're just sitting in here like we're friends and we're talking the whole time that we're going. It's a completely different thing, and it leads to such a much more lasting or effective conversation. It's not just me saying, telling you in town for it's me saying, Hey, I noticed you didn't want me to drop you off at your recovery meeting last night after I picked you up. Why was that? What's going on? Or would you like me to drop you off there tonight? You know, it's a it's a much more meaningful conversation because it's built on a new level of knowing somebody and being known by somebody. And so, so much of what we've been more effective with when it comes to recruiting and retaining volunteers has been instead of just sending out mass emails or sending out media blitzes, hey, come come volunteer to ride. It's hey, you have a car, right? You know how to drive that car, right? How about instead you come ride with me and we go pick up Steve, and we're gonna chat with Steve, we're gonna drop Steve off at his job training, and then we're gonna talk about. Afterwards, and we're gonna have a meaningful conversation. Steve and I are gonna have a meaningful conversation in front of you, and he's gonna be helped by it, you're gonna be helped by it, and then you're gonna see the value of what we're doing. And I feel like it's so easy to just say, Well, let's just do another video, let's just do another reel, let's just do another post. But it really is the reaching out and trying to get in people's lives. Let's have lunch, let's let's have a let's have a sit down with your small group at your church, or let's, you know, go to this community meeting and have a conversation. That's the places where we've had the most effective, you know, communication opportunities.
SPEAKER_02I I like to finish every episode by asking people what policies could we be considering at the federal, state, or local levels? Um, and this could be public sector, private sector, because employers make decisions too, right? So what policies should we consider that might make this fight a little easier?
SPEAKER_01Say what you will about the current administration. One of the conversations that is happening right now is kind of a encouragement of asking good questions. Whatever your intent behind asking those questions is, there's there's a bit of a spirit of let's test things against other things. You know, whether that's test medication against interpersonal connection, which is what we would love to see happening, um, testing, you know, faith-based intervention over, you know, the absence of any sort of faith-based intervention. I think just kind of this there's a bit of a shift in the culture toward let's ask as many questions as we can about what's going to be the best thing long term. Let's test what are our desired outcomes and how how reasonable are some of those desired outcomes. So I think from a policy perspective, we're just interested in seeing policymakers be interested in not just stopping at this is evidence-based, and therefore, because we call that evidence-based, because that one study said we should do it this way, we don't stop looking for more evidence and and see what can and can't be more effective. Because we really do believe that if we test some of the things that we're wanting to see the church do in people's lives, that over the course of the long term it will win out. Um because we think we have the cheat sheet, because we think we have, you know, this this this book that tells us exactly, you know, right how we should live our lives and what's going to lead to our flourishing. And so we want to we want to test that against everything. We're again, not to the elimination of medication or anything like that, but rather just to say we want to add this into the mix and have a healthy conversation about it, which until recently was not a conversation that a lot of policymakers were interested in having.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, science, science is a process of perpetual questioning, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. It should be. It should be. It should be. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh we do have a lot of evidence behind a lot of different kinds of strategies, uh, but it's definitely the case that there's not enough studies done into social models, uh, the connection-based and faith-based programming. Uh, we definitely need a lot more research into these fields for sure, and to see how they compare and supplement existing models.
SPEAKER_00But I but I think that, so I think broadening, I mean, when you think policy, I think funding, you know, because there has been a real kiosh on anything that doesn't provide medication as a route, which shuts down a whole lot. I mean, and and and to test against, fine, but right now our evidence is based on testing, testing a medical model against a medical model. And not not other things. And so I think I think that that has kind of directed us in a very narrow profit-making direction, I'll say it that way.
SPEAKER_02A study design has just popped into my mind. You have a purely medical model, uh, a medical plus faith, uh faith uh-based uh initiative as well. Uh it would be interesting to see a cohort study like that.
SPEAKER_00Right, right.
SPEAKER_02Andy Klements, Tanner Clements, uh, thank you both very much for joining me on the Smart Policy Podcast. I really enjoyed this conversation.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having us.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for having us. For more episodes on in-depth discussions on Tennessee policies related to substance juice disorder by a range of local experts. Please subscribe to us wherever you get podcasts and visit our website at smart.tennasty.edu. I'm Jeremy Corvellis. Thank you for listening and see you next month.