Coastal Point •

-More than 300 lives were lost to overdose in Delaware in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Delaware ranks ninth in the country in its overdose death rate.

“It’s pandemic, really,” said Lisa Coldiron, grant manager for the Sussex County Health Coalition, a non-profit organization whose mission is to “engage the entire community in collaborative family-focused effort to improve the health of children, youth and families in Sussex County.”

Seaford High School students spent three days this summer training to be Botvin LifeSkills Training Peer Mentors to Seaford Middle School students for the upcoming school year.

The group is one of many trying to address the public health crisis in Delaware, and it will be hosting the Herren Project — a Project Purple Initiative, founded by former NBA basketball player Chris Herren, who himself once overdosed on heroin — which assists individuals and families struggling with addiction.

“He was talking to a group of high school students, and one young lady raised her hand and said, ‘My friends and I are sober.’ He said you could hear the snickering in the crowd. He said he was so proud of her, that she had the confidence to do that, and she was wearing a purple T-shirt. That’s what prompted him to form this Project Purple,” explained Coldiron.

“He’s made it his mission to empower young people to make wise decisions, to understand that they’re OK just the way they are, help them feel good about themselves and to de-stigmatize addiction and recovery,” said Coldiron. “He’s been on the speaking circuit for a while now. We really felt it was important to get a big name to bring the awareness and create a buzz. We want this to be just the beginning.”

Having overdosed from heroin in 2008, and making it through a drug treatment program, Herren has now been sober for 10 years.

“He really wants to bring awareness to the dangers of prescription drugs. No one wakes up and says, ‘I’m going to be an addict today.’”

Coldiron said she hopes everyone in the community attends the free event, which will conclude with a brief question-and-answer session.

“I’m hoping we’ll have young children, families, students, older folks who would like to hear and have hope… because it’s a message of hope.”

Coldiron said the Herren event is the kickoff for what the coalitions hopes will be a multi-year drug-awareness and -prevention campaign in the county and throughout the state.

“We also have two very unique programs we’re starting that are being looked at as possible national models,” she explained. “School-based mental health collaborative in four districts — Indian River, Cape Henlopen, Woodbridge and Seaford.

“With the help of our funders, we have brought trauma-informed care training for all of the teachers in those districts, suicide-prevention training for the teachers, and a cadre of therapists and counselors in the schools, so when a student comes to a teacher and says, ‘I’m depressed’ or if they’re acting out or if there’s an addiction issue…

“The wait used to be two months long. Now it’s down to two weeks because of this program. That is one piece of the puzzle.”

The second program is Botvin LifeSkills Training, an evidence-based substance abuse- and violence-prevention program used in schools and communities worldwide.

“It was started by a physician. They’ve had a tremendous success rate. It’s specifically for middle-school students. It’s not just around drug-prevention, but it’s also a leadership program. It’s life skills, its making wise choices. It’s acting from informed decisions and not impulse, how to handle anxiety — all of these things,” explained Coldiron.

“What we’re doing that’s uniquely different is we’ve taken Botvin trainers at the University of Delaware and trained in a three-day long retreat 11 selected Seaford High School students. Now that they’ve been trained, they’ll serve as peer trainers in the middle schools, under the direction of and in close touch with the Botvin trainers.”

While those who use the Botvin program do not normally use peer trainers, Coldiron said it looks like a promising pilot program.

“We’re just going on the knowledge that middle-schoolers will listen much quicker to a high school student than they will some of us,” she said. “We’re hoping that will bring another level of prevention help and give these students the ability to stop, think and make wise decisions on their own. You can see this is a huge, robust campaign.”

Read more: Herren project