[Thanks to Addiction Professional Magazine Editor Gary A. Enos, Editor for reporting]
A community that often is dubbed the nation’s capital for recovery also would like to become known as a center for advanced dialogue on community solutions to drug problems.
Next February, Delray Beach, Fla., will host a three-hour event called “SUD Talks,” modeled after the popular TED Talks in which speakers offer brief (generally under 18 minutes), focused presentations to spread ideas on a topic of interest. The Delray Beach Drug Task Force, which has succeeded locally in bringing leaders together for monthly discussions of community issues, has trademarked the name SUD Talks (for “Substance Use Disorder”) for what it hopes will become a recurring event in the city.
The speakers at the Feb. 11 event at the Delray Beach Center for the Arts’ Crest Theater (accommodating just over 300 guests) therefore will address the audience not on their areas of clinical or policy expertise, but on their vision for how to create change in communities challenged by substance use problems.
The typically brief talks will be followed by a 45-minute presentation by the event’s visionary speaker: author and integrative physician Carl Hammerschlag, MD.
The event also illustrates the continued maturation of the task force in Delray Beach, home to the nation’s most prominent concentration of recovery residences (and located in a surrounding region with a substantial presence of primary addiction treatment facilities as well).
The task force now has a 45-member advisory board that represents diverse sectors of the community, and its monthly meetings feature a presence from law enforcement, educators, the business community, and treatment and recovery professionals.
“We’re advocating for the entire community, not just for people in recovery,” says the Task Force’s Executive Director, Suzanne Spencer.
Lineup of speakers:
- Kevin Wandler, MD, associate chief medical officer at Advanced Recovery Systems.
- John Dyben, director of older adult treatment services at Hanley Center.
- Elaine Rotenberg, clinical director at West Palm Beach-based Alpert Jewish Family and Children’s Services.
- Marc Woods, Delray Beach’s code enforcement officer.
- Carl Hammerschlag, MD, author and integrative physician
For more information, please visit: www.sudtalks.org
