MARS: Helping Those in Need Down the Path to Recovery
Our first priority at the MARS Project is to educate patients about opiate addiction, how medications work, and recovery. Many do not realize or have been told not to believe that opiate addiction is a chronic brain disease and not a symptom of a lack of character or moral fiber.
Located in Bronx, New York, the Medication Assisted Recovery Support Project (MARS) is a collaborative endeavor of the National Alliance of Methadone Advocates (NAMA) and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The program offers recovery support services to patients in the outpatient methadone treatment program. These services are designed and delivered by recovering peers who have a unique understanding of the challenges and opportunities one encounters on the road to recovery. The services provided by MARS complement those provided in the treatment program, focusing on giving participants the tools they need to be more effective facilitators of their own recovery and affirming that they are, indeed, bona fide members of the recovery community, and not individuals who are, as a common myth has it, substituting one addiction for another.
As of December 31, 2010, the MARS project served 532 individuals for six months and, as a result of the program, many participants’ lives were improved. The program was able to:
- Nearly triple employment;
- Decrease homelessness by more than 20 percent; and
- Increase the rate of abstinence from drugs and alcohol by 26 percent.
MARS is proud to be the first program that serves persons in medication-assisted recovery to receive a Recovery Community Services Program grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA). These grants are made available to peer-led organizations that provide community-based recovery support services, such as recovery coaching, peer mentoring, housing and employment support. Through the MARS program, we teach those we serve that there are many pathways to recovery, and that all are worthy of celebration.
Walter Ginter is Project Director at the Medication Assisted Recovery Support (MARS) Project
This post is part of the Recovery Month series. Visit RecoveryMonth.gov for information on Recovery Month or use the online locator to find treatment services near you.
White House Blogs
- The White House Blog
- Middle Class Task Force
- Council of Economic Advisers
- Council on Environmental Quality
- Council on Women and Girls
- Office of Intergovernmental Affairs
- Office of Management and Budget
- Office of Public Engagement
- Office of Science & Tech Policy
- Office of Urban Affairs
- Open Government
- Faith and Neighborhood Partnerships
- Social Innovation and Civic Participation
- US Trade Representative
- Office National Drug Control Policy
categories
- AIDS Policy
- Alaska
- Blueprint for an America Built to Last
- Budget
- Civil Rights
- Defense
- Disabilities
- Economy
- Education
- Energy and Environment
- Equal Pay
- Ethics
- Faith Based
- Fiscal Responsibility
- Foreign Policy
- Grab Bag
- Health Care
- Homeland Security
- Immigration
- Innovation Fellows
- Inside the White House
- Middle Class Security
- Open Government
- Poverty
- Rural
- Seniors and Social Security
- Service
- Social Innovation
- State of the Union
- Taxes
- Technology
- Urban Policy
- Veterans
- Violence Prevention
- White House Internships
- Women
- Working Families
- Additional Issues