UNION COUNTY, Tenn. (WVLT) - Researchers at the University of Tennessee, alongside several community partners, are working to reduce opioid use disorder in rural counties across East Tennessee.

“Rural areas not only have fewer resources, but they also have a much higher likelihood of facing addiction if not personally in their families, and that’s a that’s a pretty bad combination,” said Laurie Meschke, professor of public health at UT.

Part of the solution is university consortium project “COURAGE” or Combating Opioid Use in Rural Appalachia with Grace and Evidence. The university said one of the five goals of the project is to educate rural fifth graders and the adults who care for them about opioid use disorder and how to prevent it.

“Fifth graders are at a developmental stage that we call early adolescence, and in general, at that age, young people are still attached to their caregivers,” Meschke said. “They’re not pushing away parents quite yet, as we see with older people or older adolescents who are becoming more autonomous, and so we have a chance to capitalize on that.”

ICARE-Union County is one of the community groups in the COUARAGE program. Executive Director Mindy Grimm said the sessions are at least one semester in Union County elementary schools, and they usually meet once a week. The students learn about the stigma of drugs, what they can do to them, decision making and what influences go into those decisions.

“We’re going to provide them with information about, you know, fentanyl and let them know that stuff can kill you easily,” Grimm said. “We teach them to be thinking about that kind of stuff and not just taking anything that somebody may offer.”

The classes also give the ten- and 11-year-olds a space to share their own experiences. Meschke said she sees many of the young people become very courageous and share their stories.

“We’ve had young people share their story and plead with their peers. This is really serious. ‘My parents are suffering from this. I can’t live with them anymore.’ And this is something that we of course, never asked them to do and was extremely spontaneous,” Meschke said.

Grimm said some of the students who complete the fifth grade program go on to be on an advisory board at the middle school level.

“I want them, the students, to have a voice in what we’re doing within the school because they’re there so they know what’s going to make the most impact on their fellow students,” Grimm said.

She said the goal is all to break the cycle of opioid use and give students a voice.

She continued, saying “Stigma reduction is one of our one of our main goals this year and so having having the students be able to break that stigma within the school system, I think it will branch out and bleed out into the community as a whole and in the end.”

Data from the Tennessee Department of Health shows there have been 57 drug overdose deaths involving opioids between 2013-2022 in Union County. About one in four of those deaths were just in the two year span between 2021 and 2022.

If you’d like to help, Grimm said they have volunteer opportunities and also take food donations. They are not able to accept monetary donations at this time. ICARE’s website has her contact information.

The goals of COURAGE also include training college students studying to be in the healthcare field to care for patients with opioid use disorder, reduce the stigma toward people prescribed OUD medications as part of their recovery, give faith leaders in the community ways to support people with addiction and their families and coordinate drug takeback programs.