Twenty-one-year-old Brandon Taylor Bell, 19-year-old Ryan Christopher Bagwell, 17-year-old Ryan Garcia—these are just a few of the 560,000-plus lives tragically lost to the opioid crisis. Their families took to Washington, DC last month to participate in the 2024 National Family Summit on Fentanyl, organized by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in partnership with CADCA. Held on November 14-15, the event brought together 125 attendees to provide support to families affected by the fentanyl crisis through specialized tracks, workshops, and resources.
The DEA’s third annual Summit offered attendees the chance to visit the new interactive Faces of Fentanyl exhibit, attend plenary sessions, and participate in engaging workshops that left them with actionable strategies to support families. The two-day event featured two unique tracks, “Heal” and “Help,” that addressed different needs within the family and community landscape. CADCA’s trainers, Yvonne Stroman and Kym Laube, facilitated the Help track, designed to strengthen participants’ operational capacity. Topics covered included effective goal setting, identifying resources, demonstrating the impact of work, and working toward sustainability.
During the Heal track, attendees kicked things off by partnering up and sharing their personal stories of loss. Through activities like grief check-ins and letter writing, participants expressed their feelings and honored the memories of their loved ones. The afternoon featured therapeutic workshops like beaded bracelet-making with the Beading Heart organization, allowing attendees to process and express their grief in a creative way. Speakers shared personal experiences and strategies for navigating loss, combatting stigmas, and finding support. Overall, the event emphasized the importance of building grief support networks, addressing social isolation, and forming personal and community connections.
CADCA’s involvement in the Summit builds on its ongoing partnership with the DEA through Operation Engage, a community-based initiative that bridges public health and public safety to address the drug epidemic through prevention strategies. Each DEA field division office identifies a challenging area within their region based on current drug threat data, designates a target city or region, and concentrates evidence-informed substance use prevention and community outreach efforts to make a measurable difference.
