Collaborating With Local Imams to Prevent Opioid Abuse in the Somali Community
Our colleagues in the Health Improvement Bureau at MDH recently completed a series of trainings with several Twin Cities Imams, Muslim faith leaders, to help combat the opioid epidemic ravaging local communities. The team hopes that this project will be a replicable model of how to partner with faith-based communities in the opioid epidemic response, and in understanding substance use disorder, mental health and trauma more broadly. “Engaging faith leadership to take a knowledgeable stand on the issue of opioid use in our community allows a community’s selected and trusted leadership to serve their people in this important issue,” said Imam Sharif Mohamed of the Islamic Civic Society of America/Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque, which is based in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. Imam Sharif and Kate Erickson, the MDH opioid overdose prevention director, spearheaded the initiative together as part of the Data-Driven Prevention Initiative funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2016, nearly 400 Minnesotans died of an opioid-involved death, and prescription opioids remain the leading cause of opioid-involved death. Since the launch of the Opioid Dashboard last fall, Kate has been giving presentations about the opioid epidemic throughout the state, highlighting the data and information included in the Opioid Dashboard to local…