Community Workers Strive To Keep Former Inmates Out Of Prison By Focusing On Their Health Needs
“We’ve always known incarceration is bad for health,” said Leah G. Pope, director of the substance use and mental health program at the Vera Institute of Justice, a research and advocacy group. “But in an age of increasing attention to justice reform and health care reform, the two are increasingly connected.”
The New York Times:
They’re Out Of Prison. Can They Stay Out Of The Hospital?
The night Ronald Sanders turned his life around, he had been smoking crack for two days in a tiny, airless room. His infant son, Isaiah, was breathing in the fumes. “His chest was beating really hard,” Mr. Sanders recalled. “So I pray: ‘If my son makes it through the night, that’s it.’” Mr. Sanders quit using drugs and stopped cycling in and out of prison more than two decades ago. He is now a community health worker who helps people getting out of prison deal with a host of medical, psychiatric and substance abuse disorders. (Brown, 5/29)
