SAMHSA Awards $3.75M for Mobile Opioid Treatment on Long Island

CN Guidance & Counseling Services has been awarded a $3.75 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to expand opioid treatment, recovery support and overdose prevention across Nassau and Suffolk counties, the Hicksville-based nonprofit announced Monday. The money funds a mobile, community-based model in which clinicians and certified peer specialists ride into neighborhoods with elevated overdose risk instead of waiting for residents to find a clinic.

Services will be delivered from specially equipped outreach vehicles, including a mobile RV and a service truck.

What the money pays for

The program is built around identifying people with opioid use disorder in community settings, connecting them to evidence-based treatment, and then providing ongoing recovery support. CN Guidance said the vehicles will connect people to medications for opioid use disorder, including methadone and other FDA-approved medications, along with substance use and mental health treatment, behavioral therapies and case management.

The scope extends past the prescription. Outreach teams will also provide overdose prevention education and naloxone distribution, tobacco cessation integrated into substance use treatment, and infectious disease prevention, screening, testing and referrals. Peer specialists with lived experience in recovery are written into the model as the people who make first contact, not as an add-on to clinical staffing.

Why mobile units matter for medication treatment

A mobile program does not remove the structural barrier that shapes opioid treatment in the United States: methadone is dispensed at certified opioid treatment programs, and patients early in treatment generally dose in person. That requirement is what makes distance and transportation decisive. A clinic across town is functionally much further for someone without a car, a fixed address or a work schedule that tolerates a daily trip.

Bringing assessment, buprenorphine initiation and counseling to a park or a food pantry shortens the distance between a person's first conversation about treatment and their first dose. The medication-assisted treatment and opioid treatment programs pages on this site describe how that continuum is organized and what patients can expect at each level.

Peers as the first contact

Mary Silberstein, a senior director at CN Guidance, framed the grant as an answer to barriers that keep people out of care even when services exist. "Many people struggling with substance use face significant barriers that prevent them from getting the care and support they need," she said in a statement.

"By meeting people where they are and building trusted relationships within the community, we can connect individuals and their families to lifesaving prevention, treatment and recovery resources, reduce overdose risks and help more Long Islanders achieve lasting recovery," she said.

Jeffrey Friedman, the agency's chief executive, described the award as an expansion of reach rather than a new line of work. "This federal investment allows us to expand our reach and bring critical services directly to those who may not otherwise receive care," he said. "We are grateful to SAMHSA for supporting this important initiative and helping us strengthen Long Island's response to the opioid epidemic."

Where the vehicles will go

The agency listed potential outreach sites that suggest a wide net: community centers, parks, transportation hubs, shopping centers, food pantries, libraries, health care facilities, Department of Social Services offices, probation offices and other gathering places. Several of those locations serve people whose involvement with the criminal legal system or the benefits system already puts them in contact with staff who can make a referral.

The grant lands in a region that has been allocating its own opioid settlement dollars to treatment capacity, including Suffolk County's grant process for local providers. Federal money and settlement money are separate streams with different rules, but both are being directed at the same problem: the gap between knowing that medication works and being able to reach a prescriber, a dose and a counselor on a Tuesday morning.