Ashley Addiction Treatment has launched a $20 million campaign to fund a new research facility and a family-based recovery experience..
The “Unlocking Ashley’s Future” capital campaign quietly launched 18 months ago, but has raised $17 million to date to fund improvements to Ashley Addiction facilities, expand family and youth programs and provide scholarships to increase access to treatment.
Ashley Addiction, which has served more than 65,000 patients since 1983, provides addiction treatment in both residential and outpatient settings as well as an extended care facility in Harford County, utilizing mental health services, medicine and spiritual care. Funds from the campaign are already being used to improve family services, start research projects and improve patient access, the nonprofit said.
The future on-campus Namvary Research Building, funded by the campaign, is part of an effort to bolster addiction research that could advance treatment practices.
“Dedicating money specifically to research is really important now more than ever because traditionally federal-level funding funds research projects,” Jami Barney, research manager for Ashley Addiction, said. “Right now there’s a lot of uncertainty with the [National Institutes of Health] and budget cuts in different areas and grant proposals not getting approved.”
Barney said it is rare for treatment facilities to have research facilities as well. The newly funded research groups will share their findings to help other treatment facilities improve their care.
“What we’re trying to do here is really bring science into a system that functioned off of philosophy and tradition for so long,” Barney said. “We’re trying to learn, treat and teach. We’re trying to use data to guide different treatment strategies and understand what’s effective and what’s working.
Alex Dentsman, co-CEO and president of Ashley Addiction, said the campaign’s goal is to create a profound impact on addiction recovery locally and within the industry at large. .
“We have a national footprint in the sense that there are patients who travel to enter our care,” Dentsman said. “Almost 100% of our outpatient patients are Marylanders, so this is very much a regional focus.”
Of the $17 million raised so far, Ashley Addiction said $2.5 million of the funds will go to scholarships for patients, $2.5 million will be used for facility improvements, $5 million will be used to improve family services and $10 million will be used for research into addiction recovery.
One service already implemented is Recovering Together at Ashley, a two-day experience for family members of those in recovery. The program has been running for 17 weeks with over 99 family participants.
”
“It’s a very intensive experience where the families and their patients get education related to the progression of addiction in a family, to different skills that they can use in order to improve their communication styles,” Jennifer Aguglia, VP of clinical services, said.
With the campaign, Greg Hobbelman, Co-CEO and president of Ashley Addiction, said the treatment center aims to treat people “better, faster and in ways that last.”
“At Ashley, data doesn’t just live in a file. It guides real-time decisions about a patient’s care,” he said. “For too long, addiction medicine has lagged behind other fields of healthcare. Our goal is to change that by grounding treatment in evidence, not just philosophy.”
from Baltimore Sun https://ift.tt/YsqwEB6
via IFTTT
