When the Southeastern Prevention and Addiction Recovery Resource Center launched in 2021, its leaders aimed to save lives in Robeson County.
Since then, the SPARC program housed at UNC Pembroke has partnered with more than 70 nonprofits, police departments, and local government agencies to provide treatment, early intervention education, and the overdose-reversing medication naloxone.
Now the group is expanding throughout southeastern North Carolina, where many communities have experienced high rates of drug-overdose deaths. The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, which funded SPARC’s launch four years ago, recently gave the group a three-year, $1.05 million grant to create the Southeastern Prevention and Addiction Recovery Resource Center Regional Opioid Consortium. Robeson and five other counties are participating: Bladen, Columbus, Cumberland, Richmond, and Scotland.
“We pursued SPARC because we heard from grassroots communities that they wanted to address opioid addiction and overdose deaths,” said Nora Ferrell, vice president of communications for the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. “We also heard that folks wanted help with coordination and data.”
Local health departments, nonprofits, and community members in the six-county region will share solutions that have been successful in their communities and suggest ways to implement them across the region, said SPARC director Jacqueline Davis.
“We’ll focus on system changes, policy changes across the board—not just locally in one county–to have the collaboration of multiple counties and serve as one voice for our region,” Davis said.
The consortium hopes to grow to at least 40 members, according to Summer Woodside, SPARC’s lead investigator and chair of the Department of Social Work at UNC Pembroke. She said a committee of up to 12 people with lived experience with substance use disorders will direct the group.
North Carolina has seen a significant drop in fatal drug overdoses. The state had an overdose death rate of about 23 per 100,000 residents in 2025—down from a peak of 40 in 2023, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. Health experts say several factors have contributed to the decrease, including the availability of naloxone that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
Counties in the southeastern corner of the state have also seen declines in fatal overdoses, but they still have some of the highest death rates in the state. Bladen and Scotland counties had the second- and third-highest overdose death rates in the state last year, with about 57 and 56 per 100,000 residents, respectively.
After seeing a major decline in fatal drug overdoses in 2024, Robeson was one of 32 counties across the state that saw an increase last year. Sixty-seven people in Robeson died of overdoses in 2025, up from 62 the prior year, according to state data.
Stigma surrounding substance use disorders is the primary barrier to care, representatives said at the regional consortium kickoff event on September 25. Many residents still view naloxone as a harmful drug, said Charlton Roberson, eastern regional coordinator for the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition.
“Eliminating stigma is a priority,” said Amanda Holland, director of the Scotland County Department of Health and Human Services. “When we don’t do that, what that ultimately means is that folks are losing their lives because they’re suffering in silence because they don’t have access.”
Some counties are further ahead than others, attendees said. Cumberland and Robeson counties have well-established groups like SPARC and the Cumberland-Fayetteville Opioid Response Team.
North Carolina’s 100 counties and 17 municipalities are receiving money from national settlements with drug manufacturers and other companies blamed for the opioid epidemic. Jason Baisden, senior program officer for the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust’s Health Improvement Program, said rural counties received fewer dollars than their urban counterparts because of their population sizes.
Unlike urban counties, Woodside said, local governments in southeastern North Carolina don’t have spare money to reduce the opioid crisis. The region has some of the state’s poorest counties, and their governments are operating with increasingly tight budgets because of rising costs and federal funding cuts, she said.
“Opioid settlement money is great, but it’s not unlimited,” Woodside said. “It’s going to run out at some point, so how do you continue to work together to sustain resources, bring in more resources so that the work can continue and be sustained even beyond the opioid settlement dollars?”
The Kate B. Reynolds grant will pay for member organizations’ stipends, consortium meetings, a legislative consultant, and workforce development strategies, according to Woodside. She said another two-year, $200,000 grant from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration will pay for new part-time roles with SPARC, including a data coordinator, and help fill any funding gaps.
To date, the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust has given about $2 million to SPARC. Baisden said SPARC’s ongoing challenge will be to address immediate needs like improving access to treatment and recovery housing while also working to find and implement long-term solutions.
Consortium leaders will advocate for member counties at the N.C. General Assembly, Woodside said. By banding together, she said, communities have “potential for a louder voice, maybe a larger seat at the table.”
At UNC Pembroke, SPARC will use Kate B. Reynolds funds to continue funding scholarships for social work students’ study materials, test fees, and internships if they commit to working in the region post-graduation. It will also help pay for students pursuing certificates in addiction and recovery studies at Richmond Community College.
“We want this work to be ground up,” Woodside said. “It’s not a top-down approach. It’s about who’s doing the work coming in and partnering together.”
Editor’s Note: The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust provides funding to the Border Belt Independent but does not have any editorial control.