The Agency for Substance Abuse Prevention, based in Oxford, Alabama, is expanding their Faith-Based Support Specialist program nationwide with the help of a $400,000 grant from the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts.

The training program equips faith leaders with the knowledge and tools to better support individuals struggling with substance misuse disorders and connect them to local resources. Now, the program will reach major cities including Nashville, Atlanta, New York, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.

“We become the bridge between those individuals and the certified treatment and recovery services that are in our communities. If we don’t have that knowledge, we are the gap,” Eugene Jacobs, faith-based support specialist ambassador, told AL.com.

“The biggest thing that I am hearing from the community is that our faith leaders are able to connect struggling individuals to the resources that they need in a much timelier manner.”

Since the program’s launch in 2022, organizers have certified 427 faith leaders across Alabama and beyond through a curriculum backed by the Alabama Department of Mental Health.

Nationally, there were about 87,000 drug overdose deaths from October 2023 to September 2024, down from around 114,000 the previous year. This is the fewest number of overdose deaths in any 12-month period since June 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Alabama, there were 266 confirmed overdose deaths from January 2024 through the end of October 2024, a decline from previous years. In 2022, Alabama documented 1,492 overdose deaths, 31.5 overdoses per 100,000 people, according to a 2024 Alabama Opioid Overdose and Addiction Council report.

After attending his first Faith-Based Support Specialist training conference in 2022, Jacobs changed the way he led his own congregation, at Union Springs Missionary Baptist Church in Talladega, to better support community members who struggle with addiction and substance misuse.

“If they were equipped with the certified training and knowledge like what we provide through the program, that could be lives saved,” Jacobs said.

He said he hopes that by training other faith leaders to combine their faith work with mental health services, they can transform their communities and continue to help reduce overdose deaths and substance misuse nationwide.

“At those seminars we talk about prevention, stigma, coalition building, treatment and recovery,” Jacobs said. “The people that we’ve had at the conferences, they were refreshed to be connected to the resources that they did not know about.”

Founded in 2018, the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts is a national 501(c)(3) grant-making foundation dedicated to addressing the nation’s opioid crisis.

The Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts provided the Agency for Substance Abuse and Prevention with financial and informational support for the launch of the Faith-Based Specialist Support program in 2022.

The foundation announced grant awards totaling $2.1 million to four organizations, including the Faith-Based Support Specialist program, dedicated to strengthening the behavioral health workforce and addressing critical gaps in substance use disorder care.

“FORE launched its Innovation Challenge program in 2022 to support new solutions to some of the most difficult issues related to the opioid and overdose crisis,” Karen Scott, president of the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts, said in a statement.

“By investing in innovative programs that expand peer support, integrate culturally responsive care, and build a more sustainable behavioral health workforce, we are helping to create lasting solutions that improve lives and strengthen communities.”

The Faith-Based Support Specialist program will continue to have regular trainings in Alabama amid its expansion. The next training will take place in New York on June 27.