Collaboration Over Isolation: Why Partnership Matters

Siloed efforts keep us exactly where we are. Real change happens when we come together.

Naxos Neighbors have been an invaluable partner to Life Treatment Centers, united with us in the belief that “Where there’s life, there’s hope.” — Publius Terentius Afer and Stephen Hawking.

Together, we’ve worked to provide opioid overdose awareness to every individual we serve. This powerful collaboration has created a ripple effect of impact, extending far beyond our organization and into the heart of our community, touching lives and advancing safety with every step.

Recently, one of our residents played a critical role in responding to an overdose at a local gas station by providing Narcan—which they now carry daily—to bystanders who were already attempting to assist but did not have access to the medication.

As co-founder Joanne Cogdell says, “That’s the power of equipping and trusting people to be part of the solution.”

Our most recent shared success, with critical support from the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Chemistry, is the identification of medetomidine, an extremely dangerous sedative increasingly found in the local drug supply, often used to cut heroin. This substance is not addressed by standard opioid treatment protocols and may have gone undetected without our coordinated harm reduction and drug checking efforts. To learn more, please refer to the Drug Checking Alert on medetomidine

We are incredibly grateful to work alongside partners like Naxos Neighbors, who are just as committed to meeting this moment with urgency, compassion, and evidence-based action.

This is what community looks like. This is how lives are saved.