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OUTREACH PEERS

Outreach Peers

Recovery Epicenter Foundation has been privileged to provide Outreach Peer Support for Pinellas and Pasco Counties since March of 2022, thanks to our continued subcontract work with our managing entity, Central Florida Behavioral Health Network. Our Outreach peers work diligently throughout the community providing education,
information, and linkage to services for potential participants and programs who are in need of recovery resources and community connections. We have created numerous programs to support the least fortunate amongst us and are proud of the impact we have had on our community.

Since 2014

Serving Our Community

Throughout Pinellas and Pasco, local authorities have the ability to track where the majority of overdose deaths and emergency calls are coming from. And, an overwhelming number of those calls are coming from major traffic routes throughout our community such as Highway 19 and Intersections 52 and 54 in Pasco, and the Holiday area. In Pinellas our major hotspots are where Gulf to Bay, East Bay, Park St, and Childs Park all connect with 19.
 
A trend of this pattern existing fluctuates each month, but the areas of concern remain largely the same over the last three years. 
 
At the Recovery Epicenter Foundation we have been working towards narcan saturation in these areas to prevent these deaths.   
 
Pasco’s Purple box campaigns in a program sponsored by Pasco County Health Department      where businesses partner with us to host an accessible outdoor narcan station, that can be    anonymously accessed by the community. Since starting in Fall of 2023, this program has distributed over 10,000 boxes of narcan in Pasco with an average of 400 being restocked each month. 
 
In Pinellas County we partner with the PSTA to provide narcan at each major hub, as well as maintain a newspaper style kiosk at Grand Central Station, and have connected the PSTA with narcan to have on each of their buses. Since starting in late 2024, this partnership has distributed an average of 300 boxes each month. 
 
In partnership with Pinellas Opioid Task Force, PERC, IDEA Exchange, and Florida Harm Reduction Collective, we have also made a consistent effort to “Save a Tourist” each spring break by saturating the beaches with narcan . 
 
It is with great pride and excitement that I can share with you that while there are still way too many deaths happening in our community due to opioids, and that while the number of overdoses continues to rise, the number of overdose deaths in our community are decreasing each year as more and more efforts are established to address these concerns.

Tampa Bay Times: A Story of Hope and Action

A detailed look at how Recovery Epicenter Foundation is confronting the overdose crisis in Florida—one person, one family at a time.

Recovery Epicenter in the News – WTSP 10 Tampa Bay

WTSP highlights our Narcan distribution efforts and the impact we’re making in the community by saving lives through harm reduction strategies.

FOX 13 Covers Our Life-Saving Work

FOX 13 News shines a light on our mission to reduce overdose deaths with community-based Narcan access and peer-led support.

Recovery Epicenter Foundation believes that there already exist resources in the community that can and do regularly save lives, and that to become even more effective we need to be talking with one another on a regular basis. This effort provides our RCO active listening sessions in the communities we operate in, and helps our peers navigate the shifting landscape of addictions. From the Recovery Round Tables our outreach teams are able to respond quicker than waiting for “official reports” to community needs and has been the birthplace for many of our outreach efforts. Starting in March of 2022, Recovery Round Tables have grown throughout the Tampa Bay Region with regular meetings held in Pasco, and Hillsborough. Look for Pinellas to restart in the near future.
Street-Outreach
PSTA-Outreach
Pasco-Outreach

Homeless Outreach

Along with connecting residents with narcan, our outreach peers work with local communities to support those who have been most negatively affected by the opioid epidemic. Homelessness and housing insecurity is often a bi-product of an active addiction and our outreach peers provide numerous opportunities for our local homeless population to receive basic supplies, including some food and hygiene products, as well as linkage to care for any who choose to accept help. To join us at one of our events in Pasco or Pinellas, and or to donate please reach out and be a part of the solution that is saving lives.

Collegiate Recovery Program

Outreach peers with Recovery Epicenter Foundation have been working towards establishing recovery support at local colleges since 2022. For a time in 2023 and 2024 we worked primarily with Eckard, but those efforts stopped when the hurricanes disrupted campus life in the early fall of 2024. But, starting with Saint Petersburg College in 2022, and returning to that process now in 2025, Recovery Epicenter Foundation is proud to share that through an MOU with Saint Petersburg College we are working together to make our local higher education a recovery friendly environment that supports students and staff. Narcan is now on every campus, and outreach peers are dedicating a day each week to be on a campus of which SPC has 7+ throughout Pinellas County. Look for recovery events and group projects to emerge from this collaboration where student lead recovery opportunities for service organically grow a collegiate recovery program throughout Saint Petersburg College.

 

Recovery Cafe Network

Recovery Epicenter Foundation is partnering with the Recovery Cafe Network and Good Samaritan Church to provide a Recovery Community Center to downtown Saint Petersburg located at 1940 Central Ave, Saint Petersburg Florida. In the coming months as the inside of the building is renovated, we expect to host local recovery meetings. In 2026, we intend to be up and running with an onsite recovery cafe thanks to the RCN network, from 2pm-7pm most days of the week.