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America Honors Recovery
Carnegie Institute for Science
1530 P Street NW
Washington, DC 20005
June 27, 2012
6-8pm
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MASSACHUSETTS ORGANIZATION FOR ADDICTION RECOVERY
Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery (MOAR) was founded in 1991 by Maryanne Frangules and a group of volunteers, inspired by Senator Harold Hughes, a former US Senator in recovery, and the founder of the national Society of Americans in Recovery (SOAR). Over the last 21 years, MOAR has worked to: 1). Organize people in recovery, families and friends 2). Educate policy makers and the general public and 3). Demonstrate that recovery is real and an asset to all communities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
MOAR's founding board consciously embraced the many pathways to recovery and the inclusion and support of families, friends and allies. MOAR members and events feature partnerships with key allies in the public and private sectors. MOAR's Public Policy Forums reflects MOAR's commitment to engagement with policy makers, state officials, family members and people in recovery to foster community action to create a society where addiction is treated as a significant public health issue and recovery is recognized as valuable to all communities.
MOAR frequently works in coalition with other organizations in its advocacy campaigns, for example, being a leader in the MA Coalition for Addiction Services, educating policymakers about the need to build and support a continuum of services including helping mentor many to build a foundation for living in recovery. MOAR is co-leading a Good Samaritan Campaign to protect overdose witnesses and overdose victims from being charged for possession of a controlled substance when calling 911 to seek medical help during an overdose. MOAR was deeply involved in the first Making Overdoses History rally at the MA state house in 2011. MOAR is involved in criminal justice reform coalitions.
MOAR has developed community recovery resource guides and is using peer-to-peer connection and training - Addiction Recovery Education Access Services (AREAS) to educate the recovery community about issues such as Navigating the State Service System; Know Your Rights; Housing; Finding Facts and Fighting Myths.
"Building a Voice for Recovery" heard by policymakers is a MOAR priority - How a Bill Becomes a Law; Policy Maker Education Fact Sheets; Policy Maker Education Brochures; and Speaking Out for Addiction Recovery are just a few of the organization's tools. Under Executive Director Maryanne Frangules' direction, MOAR's National Recovery Month Celebration at the State House over the last twenty years has made the Massachusetts recovery community "Visible, Vocal and Valuable."
Go to www.moar-recovery.org for MOAR information!
2012 VERNON JOHNSON AWARD HONOREES
ROBERT MCKINLEY GILMORE, SR.
Real Urban Ministry, Texas
Robert McKinley Gilmore, Sr. started using drugs at 13, by the time he was 16 it was heroin, at 19 in 1971 he almost died from a drug overdose stationed at Clark AFB in the United States Air Force. His recovery started in 1972, in the Air Force Special Treatment program that he completed in 1974 and never looked back. A Vietnam Era Veteran, he went on to earn five academic degrees from Texas Southern University, the Houston Graduate School of Theology and the University of Houston. In 1989 he wrote, "A True Story: Hope After Dope, From a Drug Addict to a Doctor," putting a "face and voice" to offer hope and advocate for recovery. He developed the Hope After Project, (www.hopeafter.org) an urban ministry Community/Church/School Prevention Program and has worked tirelessly to help and support veterans and their family members (www.maketheconnection.net).
Rev. Gilmore founded Real Urban Ministry, Inc. in 1989 which provides technical assistance, training and education to over 800 community and faith leaders in the Houston/Harris County, TX region to address addiction and recovery, creating new partnerships and building links to resource providers. A few of the organizations he works closely with to address health disparities and promote recovery include Houston Ministers Against Crime, the Baptist Ministers Association, the African American Pastors Fellowship, the AME Ministers Alliance, Northeast Harris County Ministers Alliance, Houston Police Department, Harris County Sheriff Department, the Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse just to name a few. Some of their advocacy has helped lead to the implementation of Drug Courts in Harris County, Public Defenders Office, reducing the Harris County Jail population, and the introduction of recovery planning, fighting unfair sentencing and advocating for treatment and recovery support, whether for adults or juveniles.
He is a National Certified Counselor, Texas Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor and Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor and recently received the South Central Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority for Outstanding Community Service. He is a member of the Region 6, Office of Minority Health Disparities Council and the Texas Region 6 Medicaid and CHIPS Council. He is known for the saying each time you meet him, "IT'S A BLESSING." The Rev. Dr. has put and been a Face and Voice of Recovery and presents dynamic and inspirational messages to children, teenagers and adults and working to promote recovery for the past 35 years in his home town of Houston, TX, the State of Texas and the Nation.
WALTER GINTER
National Alliance for Medication-Assisted Recovery, New York
Walter is the Project Director of the Medication-Assisted Recovery Services (MARS) Project. He is the leading face and voice of medication-assisted treatment and recovery in the US. He has used his personal story of recovery and the role that medication has played in his recovery to bring a long overdue voice to the world of methadone maintenance.
Walter has served as a patient advocate on numerous expert government and scientific panels on addiction treatment, presented at many conferences and attended the 2001 Summit founding Faces & Voices of Recovery and served on Faces & Voices board of directors. He has played multiple leadership roles in the National Alliance for Medication-Assisted Recovery, where he was the Vice President and Director of Training from 2001-2006.
Behind the scenes and in public meetings, Walter has helped forge a new focus on recovery at the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence (AATOD) including training advocates (Certified Methadone Advocate) at their annual meeting for the last nine years. He has co-authored many articles and reports, including an upcoming article on Methadone Anonymous for a special issue of Journal of Groups in Addiction and Recovery and chairing a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA/CSAT) Expert Panel, Introducing Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care (ROSC) into Opiate Treatment.
Walter has spent years developing collaborative relationships within the medication-assisted treatment community, and extending those relationships to the broader worlds of addiction treatment and recovery advocacy. He and Lisa Mojer-Torres were the first people to enter meetings and organizations historically filled only with people in recovery without the use of medications - mostly people in 12-step fellowships. It was courageous for him to enter those rooms and forge those new relationships - inviting others to join in fighting discriminatory policies and practices and embracing all pathways to recovery.
The MARS Project is the only Recovery Community Services (RCSP) program focused on wrapping people using medications in a vibrant culture of recovery. The MARS model is in the process of being replicated nationwide, integrating the use of peer-based recovery support services within methadone maintenance programs, a truly historic development.
ROSEMARY TISCH
Prevention Partnership International, California
Rosemary has dedicated her life to breaking the cycle of addiction in families. Since entering recovery in 1982, she has focused her energy on prevention, founding Kids Are Special (KAS) in 1983. KAS was one of the first nonprofits working with children of alcoholics, developing prevention programs for school children and Training Institute in Santa Clara County, CA. As the parent of two young children, Rosemary knew that addiction and recovery do not occur in a vacuum.
She has presented locally, nationally and internationally, providing the first prevention trainings in Russia in the late 1980s and later developing a school-based prevention curriculum, Keys to Healthy Living, for the Moscow schools. It's used today in 23 Russian cities in a variety of settings.
Rosemary moved on to found Family Education Foundation to support the recovery of children and families addressing multiple issues of addiction, mental health problems, violence and abuse. She has collaborated and consulted with experts in overlapping fields, incorporating innovative thoughts and strategies in new strategies. As she developed programs, founded organizations and her work evolved, she immersed herself in the research and theory of recovery and family therapy. Her knowledge and experience, driven by her desire to break the cycle of addiction in her own family, has helped many, many others.
Over the last eleven years, Rosemary has focused on the development and implementation of Celebrating Families!™ - an evidence-based, multi-family skill building curriculum focused on whole family recovery. Celebrating Families!™ (CF!) is now listed on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices and was transferred to the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACoA) in 2005. CF! was recently translated and culturally adapted by a team of Hispanic program experts. CF! Is about the children of the next generation not struggling with addiction, providing their parents who are in early recovery the respect and support they need - reuniting families.
She serves as an advisor to a variety of state, national and international bodies. Perhaps what is most powerful about Rosemary's work has been her ability to communicate so successfully with people who do not have direct experience with people in long-term recovery. Rosemary's quiet, intelligent passion about teaching families what they need in order to lead healthy lives motivates everyone with whom she comes in contact.
JEFF BLODGETT
Jeff was instrumental in the founding of Faces & Voices of Recovery and the start of a new addiction recovery advocacy movement. As Project Coordinator of the Alliance Project, he tirelessly worked to bring together the recovery community and national allies to build a national campaign that was launched in 2001. Under his leadership, the findings from the first-ever random national survey of the recovery community in this country helped craft Faces & Voices mobilizing, messaging, strategy and the Core Statement of Principles developed by the over 200 people at the Summit. That work and subsequent research have informed Faces & Voices advocacy and work ever since. Read more about the Summit here and listen to the recovery stories of Summit attendees here.
According to Jeff, "the main feeling of the summit was one of empowerment - people in recovery, coming together in numbers and in diversity, feeling the power to speak for themselves, stepping forward in a public way, telling their stories, and courageously proclaiming that we are the face of recovery. We spent a lot of time talking about language: taking on stigmatizing language (substance abusers!), and developing our own narrative about the power and possibilities of recovery as a way of creating hope for people with active addiction. The summit was all about taking recovery storytelling public, to reach people and their families that still need help and to influence public policy."
He has over 28 years' experience in community organizing and political management and studied with Paul Wellstone at Carleton College, beginning his career as a community organizer working with hard-pressed family farmers during the 1980s farm crisis. He later spent 13 years as a senior aide, advisor, and campaign manager to the late Senator (1989-2002), managing all three of his election campaigns, including the hard-fought 2002 race that was tragically cut short by a plane crash.
After leaving the Alliance Project, Jeff was the founding director of Wellstone Action and has served in key positions in dozens of political campaigns. Today he serves as the Minnesota State Director for Obama for America. A 1983 graduate of Carleton College, he earned his Master of Public Administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in 1998.
Faces & Voices of Recovery and Hazelden's Center for Public Advocacy have joined together to host America Honors Recovery honoring the legacies of Joel Hernandez, Vernon Johnson and Lisa Mojer-Torres. For questions, please email or call us at (202)737-0690.