Dr. Robyn Jordan, left, director of the UNC Addiction Medicine Program, and Dr. Marla Hardenbergh, right, of Breeches Buoy Addiction Medicine Services, unveil the name of the Addiction Treatment Linking Access to Services (ATLAS) mobile unit, which will provide medication, peer support and clinical visits for local patients recovering from Substance Use Disorder under the care of Breeches Buoy.
                                 Chris Stiles | The Robesonian

Dr. Robyn Jordan, left, director of the UNC Addiction Medicine Program, and Dr. Marla Hardenbergh, right, of Breeches Buoy Addiction Medicine Services, unveil the name of the Addiction Treatment Linking Access to Services (ATLAS) mobile unit, which will provide medication, peer support and clinical visits for local patients recovering from Substance Use Disorder under the care of Breeches Buoy.

Chris Stiles | The Robesonian

<p>Senior Miss Lumbee Sharon McNeill-Burnette, center, presents Dr. Robyn Jordan, right, director of the UNC Addiction Medicine Program, with a traditional Lumbee handwoven basket during a kickoff event for the Addiction Treatment Linking Access to Services (ATLAS) mobile unit, which will provide medication, peer support and clinical visits for local patients recovering from Substance Use Disorder under the care of Breeches Buoy Addiction Medicine Services. Dr. Marla Hardenbergh, the supervising physician of Breeches Buoy, is at left.</p>
                                 <p>Chris Stiles | The Robesonian</p>

Senior Miss Lumbee Sharon McNeill-Burnette, center, presents Dr. Robyn Jordan, right, director of the UNC Addiction Medicine Program, with a traditional Lumbee handwoven basket during a kickoff event for the Addiction Treatment Linking Access to Services (ATLAS) mobile unit, which will provide medication, peer support and clinical visits for local patients recovering from Substance Use Disorder under the care of Breeches Buoy Addiction Medicine Services. Dr. Marla Hardenbergh, the supervising physician of Breeches Buoy, is at left.

Chris Stiles | The Robesonian

<p>Dr. Robyn Jordan, right, director of the UNC Addiction Medicine Program, gives Sgt. Hollis McNeill of the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office, left, a tour of the Addiction Treatment Linking Access to Services (ATLAS) mobile unit, which will provide medication, peer support and clinical visits for local patients recovering from Substance Use Disorder under the care of Breeches Buoy Addiction Medicine Services.</p>
                                 <p>Chris Stiles | The Robesonian</p>

Dr. Robyn Jordan, right, director of the UNC Addiction Medicine Program, gives Sgt. Hollis McNeill of the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office, left, a tour of the Addiction Treatment Linking Access to Services (ATLAS) mobile unit, which will provide medication, peer support and clinical visits for local patients recovering from Substance Use Disorder under the care of Breeches Buoy Addiction Medicine Services.

Chris Stiles | The Robesonian

LUMBERTON — Breeches Buoy Addiction Medicine Services has provided evidence-based treatment to patients suffering from Substance Use Disorder at UNC Health Southeastern since June 2021. Now their services will be more accessible outside the hospital walls.

Breeches Buoy will soon begin operating a mobile bus, called ATLAS, for Addiction Treatment Linking Access to Services, with a kickoff event held Friday at Breeches Buoy’s facility. The unit will be able to deliver critical medication to patients being treated for Opioid Use Disorder, as well as peer support and even clinical visits.

“The point of the bus is to just help patients bridge to the treatment for Substance Use Disorder,” said Marla Hardenbergh, the supervising physician overseeing Breeches Buoy. “Without having that kind of medicine, to help decrease overdose (possibilities) and to decrease withdrawal symptoms, chances of patients with Opioid Use Disorder getting into treatment are pretty low, if not close to zero. Making that available will help patients get into and stay in treatment.”

Deaths and overdoses caused by Substance Use Disorder in Robeson County are twice that of any other county in North Carolina, according to N.C. Department of Health and Human Services statistics; this includes 124 overdose deaths and 1,400 documented overdose events in Robeson County during the last 12 months.

And yet, access to treatment is limited. The services provided by Breeches Buoy are the only critical-care treatment option available, and once patients are discharged it is difficult to obtain medication to help with continued recovery. Improving that access is a key reason for starting the ATLAS unit.

“We’re going to start this by seeing patients through telemedicine and filling their prescriptions, and just bringing them down here,” said Dr. Robyn Jordan, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina and the director of UNC’s Addiction Medicine Program. “The patients we see will have access to treatment, to peer support, case management, and they’ll have medication.”

The ATLAS unit will visit Robeson County once per week, every Wednesday, beginning in July; it will park at different locations in the county, which are still to be announced, to try and go near as many patients as possible. Prescriptions will be filled at UNC Health in Chapel Hill and vanned to Robeson County for pickup.

The bus includes an intake area, a secure area where medication will be stored, and a private exam room where clinical visits can take place.

Hardenbergh is one of the less than 50 physicians in North Carolina board-certified in addiction medicine, and the only one who is also board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology. She has been seeing patients with Breeches Buoy since the organization began, and has added staff to the program including two nurse practitioners, three peer support specialists and additional support staff. These positions, however, require funding, especially since most of the services provided by the organization are uncompensated.

It was this need for funding which began the relationship between Hardenbergh and Jordan — started through a blind email — that led to the ATLAS unit coming to Robeson County.

“That relationship started when our team is actively seeking ways to help offset the uncompensated care costs, so we could pay our staff,” Hardenbergh said. “I reached out to them to see what sort of collaborative suggestions they might have for us. Their response was ‘we’ll collaborate’ — and that has been an absolute godsend, because that collaboration allows us to carry our service, and this bus, to this community.”

“We figured out, with the funding that I have, are there were ways to leverage that funding to get some more support down here — and then it was just an unexpected gift that we received,” Jordan said. “We were asked to come up with an idea, and we said, well, let’s make a mobile unit and bring services to Lumberton.”

The ATLAS unit isn’t the only recent positive development for Breeches Buoy, as the organization recently moved into a new facility at 2512B Fayetteville Road.

“There’s a space of time between (patients’) discharge and their after-care appointment; our team can continue to interact with and treat the patient in that space, and those outpatient visits are what we’re doing there,” Hardenbergh said. “The other thing that this building does is it offers the opportunity for me to do some education for families, or for pregnant patients maybe who are going to be delivering and are interested in what that might look like in the newborn period.”

As Breeches Buoy continues moving forward, it hopes that the treatment options it is offering will ultimately help to bring the eye-popping statistics in Robeson County back down to a level at or even less than other counties in the state.

“The reason that this community is three times more severely affected by Substance Use Disorder than other communities is because we don’t have access here to evidence-based treatment when you’re in a critical-care situation,” Hardenbergh said. “I think what you’re going to see in five years, in 10 years, is that our outcomes are going to look like other areas, and maybe even improve upon that — I’m certainly not going to hesitate in trying.”

A long-term goal for the ATLAS unit is ultimately to make its own services become no longer needed in Robeson County.

“Being able to get people connected to treatment is going to save lives,” Jordan said. “We really want to be able to get services into the community, and be able to work this out so that the community is able to provide the medications and all the other services.”

Sports editor Chris Stiles can be reached at 910-816-1977 or by email at [email protected].