By Simone Greene
115: Where You're More Than a Number
Stories of the opioid crisis were on the front page of every newspaper when Marti Taylor was first approached by Verily (an Alphabet company) about a new opportunity to tackle this issue. At the time, Taylor was the CEO of The Ohio State University Hospital at the Wexner Medical Center. “I remember the first few waves of overdose deaths in Ohio several years ago. Patients suffering from addiction were rapidly and repeatedly seeking rehabilitation services and we - like many surrounding healthcare systems - were too frequently unsuccessful at breaking the cycle of addiction,” recalls Taylor. “Verily told me about a vision for a partnership driven ecosystem based in Dayton, Ohio that would fill many of the unmet needs of people seeking treatment, with the goal of advancing the field of addiction medicine as a Learning Health System. I knew I had to be a part of it.”
The key was partnerships. “Addiction is a complex disease - excellent medical care is critical, but it is not enough,” says Taylor. Partners, including Alexandria Real Estate Equities and two Dayton-area health systems: Premier Health and Kettering Health Network, came together with Verily to build what is now known as OneFifteen, a non-profit ecosystem dedicated to the sustained recovery of people living with opioid use disorder.
Dayton, formerly home to the Wright Brothers, and once booming with patent development and Fortune 500 companies, was struggling economically and greatly impacted by the opioid crisis, with one of the highest death rates per capita in the nation. Despite its difficulties, Dayton maintained a collaborative spirit and was determined to deploy innovative solutions. They found the perfect location in Dayton’s Carillon neighborhood: 4.5 acres of land that previously housed a machine factory. City officials, Montgomery County and community organizations partnered with Verily and Alexandria Real Estate Equities on the brick and mortar design. Upon seeing the sleek and modern structures going up, one community member quipped, “I thought you were building a spa!”
When it came time to name the new venture, the team kept coming back to the people who were impacted by the crisis. One hundred fifteen, the number of people who died every day from an opioid overdose in 2017, stuck with them. “We didn’t want a name that sounded like a typical provider because we don’t think of ourselves as a typical provider,” said Cassie Branderhorst, OneFifteen’s Community Relations Manager.
Slated to begin seeing patients in the fall of 2019, OneFifteen aims to provide the complete continuum of care. On the main campus, clients receive outpatient care at the “nest.” Clients meet for group sessions in “gathering” rooms. All rooms are equipped with technology for telehealth. During individual sessions, staff enters the room from a designated area and clients enter from the waiting area, allowing the two parties to literally “meet in the middle.” Next to the main building is the “treehouse,” a three-story structure of residential living space that houses 58 clients.
OneFifteen also leases space at Kindred Hospital, across the street from the main campus, to provide crisis stabilization and 32 in-patient beds. OneFifteen hopes to provide a one-stop location to help those who are struggling with addiction in Dayton’s community: managing behavioral health clinical services, coordinating community-based wrap-around services, engaging the neighborhood in a robust safety plan, and eventually providing retail and a grocery store to the campus.
The OneFifteen collaboration thinks through the entire experience, from the logo right down to the wood paths in the building which represent the path to recovery. “When you look at the logo, you see a circle on the bottom, representing the foundation that is so important to recovery,” says Taylor, now CEO of OneFifteen. “On the top, you see a symbol representing a move to the next level, the next step in a journey. We want to help our clients along their journey.”
OneFifteen was a featured award winner in the 2019 Innovation Now project of the Addiction Policy Forum.
Simone Greene works to highlight best practices and innovators in the field of addiction through her work at Addiction Policy Forum. Prior to joining, she was a project coordinator for The Moss Group, a correctional consulting firm based in Washington, DC. She received her master’s degree in Forensic and Legal Psychology from Marymount University.