Recovery Ecosystems: What Are They and How Can You Build One in Your Community?

This session will describe the concept of recovery ecosystems and share strategies to build and strengthen recovery ecosystems, including demonstrating relevant mapping tool functionalities. "Recovery ecosystem" describes community-level factors that are in place to support individuals in recovery from substance use disorders (SUDs). Strong recovery ecosystems are characterized by the presence of an array of services and supports in communities, such as treatment services, recovery residences, employment opportunities, and more. The NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis, East Tennessee State University, and Fletcher Group, with guidance from an expert panel, designed an index to measure the strength of rural, county-level recovery ecosystems and support efforts to build or strengthen them. The recovery ecosystem index is calculated for each county in the nation using standardized values of 14 indicators belonging to one of three component classes associated with the strength of a recovery ecosystem. The components represented are SUD Treatment, Continuum of SUD Support, and Infrastructure and Social. Each of these components is comprised of several subcomponents reflecting aspects of that dimension that are aggregated to create the component score. The index provides a single measure to reflect the strength of the recovery ecosystem in a county, where one represents the strongest and five represents the weakest recovery ecosystem. The index was incorporated within an interactive mapping tool to provide access to recovery ecosystem data for community partners to support planning, programming, and technical assistance aimed at establishing recovery ecosystems.