DDN Op-Ed by OneOhio Executive Director Alisha Nelson - National Recovery Month

OneOhio Recovery Foundation Executive Director Alisha Nelson authored the following Dayton Daily News op-ed in recognition of National Recovery Month. You can read an excerpt below and the full op-ed on the DDN website (here).

September is National Recovery Month, a time set aside each year to honor the millions of Americans living in recovery and to celebrate the families and communities who support them. At the OneOhio Recovery Foundation, we also see this as an essential opportunity for Ohioans to recommit themselves to ensuring that prevention, treatment, and recovery are within reach for everyone.

Since its establishment in 1989, National Recovery Month has been dedicated to celebrating new treatments, recognizing the millions of lives transformed by recovery, and applauding those programs and people who make recovery possible. Taken together, these impacts affirm our faith that even in the most challenging cases recovery is possible.

Yet those challenges continue because substance use disorder remain a challenge in communities across Ohio, despite so many great efforts. This year, however, there is reason for cautious optimism. Preliminary data from the Center for Disease Control show that drug overdose deaths in Ohio fell by more than 35 percent between 2023 and 2024. This ranks as one of the most significant drops in the nation, bringing fatal overdoses in our state to their lowest level since 2019. While encouraging, this progress underscores the importance of sustained investment and local leadership to protect and build upon these hard-earned gains.

It’s a message not lost at the OneOhio Recovery Foundation, where we are committed to doing exactly that. The Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization created in 2021 at the direction of Ohio’s state and local leaders to distribute 55 percent of the settlement funds the state is receiving from the pharmaceutical industry’s role in the opioid epidemic.

Read the full op-ed on the Dayton Daily News website (here).