Nation's Mayors and Public Health Experts to Meet in Baltimore to Share Successful Drug Addiction Treatment Strategies

Editors’ note: The opening plenary session, featuring four mayors and George Soros, will take place from 7 to 9 p.m., Wednesday, June 7 in the Corinthian Room of the Tremont Grand Hotel.

BALTIMORE—The Open Society Institute–Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the City of Baltimore are sponsoring a major conference to showcase effective strategies for drug addiction treatment.

Mayors and health officials from across the country will attend the conference “Cities on the Right Track: Building Public Drug Treatment Systems.” The mayors are Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, and Providence Mayor David Cicilline. Health officials from Baltimore, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, and Seattle also will present effective practices.

Philanthropist George Soros, founder of the Open Society Institute, also will discuss the importance of drug addiction treatment in revitalizing cities and creating healthier families and communities. The Open Society Institute–Baltimore has provided substantial funding to strengthen and expand Baltimore’s public drug treatment system, which is managed by the Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems (BSAS).

Since 1997, Baltimore has made it a priority to build an expanded drug treatment system. Several key local leaders in that effort will share the city’s successful strategies. Among them:

• Joshua Sharfstein, M.D., commissioner of the Baltimore Health Department
• Adam Brickner, president of Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems
• Robert Schwartz, M.D., director, Drug Addiction Treatment, Open Society Institute-Baltimore
• Carlos Hardy, director, Drug Treatment, Citizens and Planning Housing Association in Baltimore

Baltimore has mobilized broad public support for drug treatment among city, state and private funders. The result: The capacity of its public drug treatment system has increased substantially. Key points include:

• In 1997, there were 5,673 publicly funded treatment slots. In 2005, there were 8,295 slots.
• Funding for the treatment system increased from $20.3 million in 1997 to $52.9 million in 2005.
• The number of people receiving drug treatment in publicly funded programs increased from 18,449 in 1997 to 28,672 in 2005.

“Baltimore has come far in building a public system to treat its residents suffering from addiction,” said Diana Morris, director of the Open Society Institute–Baltimore. “The city has also created a clear blueprint for expansion to tackle the work that remains to be done.”

Experts believe that expanded drug addiction treatment has contributed to the city’s progress in other areas, including:

• A 25 percent decline in new HIV diagnoses from 1998 to 2004.
• A 41 percent drop in property crimes from 1998 to 2005.

Other features of Baltimore’s system include:

• Accountability. Baltimore’s DrugStat system measures treatment outcomes, allowing BSAS to evaluate programs’ effectiveness and shift resources to more successful ones.
• Scientific expert advisers. A committee of nationally recognized scientific experts reviews and recommends improvements to Baltimore’s treatment system.
• Addressing neighborhood concerns. Baltimore also works hard to build bridges between neighborhood associations and treatment providers and has developed a novel process to deal with the “not in my back yard” (NIMBY) problem.

Baltimore’s success is a foundation for future progress.

“The city’s goal is to expand treatment to permit all of its drug-addicted residents to recover from this devastating disease,” says Robert Schwartz, M.D. of OSI-Baltimore. “We need an increase in funding to treat an additional 16,000 individuals. Treating that many more people will help Baltimore dramatically improve the health of the city and reduce its overdose deaths, HIV and hepatitis infections, crime, and incarceration.”

What: A major two-day conference called Cities on the Right Track: Building Public Drug Treatment Systems

When: 7 to 9 p.m., Wednesday, June 7; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday, June 8

Where: Corinthian Room, Tremont Grand Hotel in Baltimore on June 7; Feinstone Hall, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, June 8

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Founded by philanthropist George Soros, OSI-Baltimore is a private operating foundation that supports a grantmaking, educational and capacity-building program to expand justice and opportunity for Baltimore residents. With support from a range of investors, its current work focuses on helping Baltimore's youth succeed, reducing the social and economic costs of incarceration, tackling drug addiction, and building a corps of Community Fellows to bring innovative ideas to Baltimore's underserved communities.