The Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health (PRCH) was honored by New Haven’s Varick Memorial AME Zion Church in celebration of the church’s 201st anniversary in November. The award recognized Yale Department of Psychiatry professors Dr. Chyrell Bellamy and Dr. Ayana Jordan and Yale PRCH for the IMANI Breakthrough Faith-based Opioid Recovery Program.
IMANI Breakthrough is an intervention developed by Drs. Bellamy and Jordan to target people addicted to and actively using heroin and/or other opiates, drugs, and alcohol. It consists of group-based mutual support and recovery education with wrap-around coaching provided to the participants. Facilitators/coaches are people with lived experience of addictions and recovery; and church members. IMANI also provides monthly education sessions for church and community on opioid use and ways to address this epidemic. Sessions meet monthly at local churches.
IMANI Breakthrough has been remarkably successful so far, helping over 500 people across all sites on the path toward recovery. An initiative of the State of Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, IMANI is part of the Connecticut State Targeted Response to the Opioid Crisis
For its work with IMANI Breakthrough, Varick Memorial AME Zion was one of six churches nationally to be honored at the annual Healthy Churches Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina in November.
For more information about IMANI Breakthrough, click here and here.