To combat the rising opioid-related death toll among St. Louis-area refugees and immigrants, Ethnic Communities Opioids Response Network-Missouri advocates for better resources and data. That, combined with a public health approach, is key to its strategy for overcoming that trend — and the cultural stigma around it.
Adil Imdad directs social services at the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis. His work with refugees in St. Louis started in 1995. In the past nine years, that work has included funerals. He joined ECORN-MO as a co-founder and board member because he’s seen the opioid crisis take so many young lives.
“I have seen many, many youth dying of this problem — going [in]to depression and then taking fentanyl, [having] drug substance overdoses, then committing suicide,” Imdad said. “We were already doing efforts on our own — like meetings and seminars at different mosques with the Bosnian community, the Arab community, trying to train and teach the youth not to get into [opioids] — but it was very difficult to reach out to youth who were not even attending the mosque.”
Lack of addiction resources for those with limited English language fluency contributes to the opioid problem among local Bosnians, said Bosnian Opioid Project founder and director and ECORN co-founder Aldin Lolic. Parents’ reliance upon their children for information presents a serious challenge when their children are taking opioids. Faith and cultural customs also stand as barriers to broaching personal struggles with substance use disorder. The latter is a major motivation behind Lolic’s starting the Bosnian Opioids Project and joining the ECORN coalition.
“Religious beliefs hinder seeking help outside the community,” Lolic said. “We carry our [ethnic] traditions and our culture with us where we go, and stigma is very present in the community. I wanted to talk about it.”
Addressing opioid use as a medical issue, both inside and outside clinical settings, is imperative to overcoming stigma and preventing deaths. That’s according to Dr. Zia Ahmad, an ECORN co-founder who is also director of the Salam Clinic. He recalled one physician’s story about losing his own son and the ripple effects such openness had.
“That one instance brought discussion out from something private, between friends and family, out into an open forum. And that group, who were able to listen to the story and feel it, and go back and talk about it to others in an open fashion … that is how this becomes normalized in the sense that there is no shame to it,” Ahmad said. “This is a chemical imbalance problem. It is no different from hypertension, high cholesterol or diabetes. It is something that needs to be recognized, addressed and treated.”
For ECORN co-founder and board chair Sal Valadez, the coalition exists to ask questions, engage multiple partners and advocate for resources. They also work to collect better data that doesn’t leave members of immigrant and refugee communities out in the fight against the opioid crisis.
“When we looked for the data related to our ethnic and cultural language communities, it was very difficult to get any,” Valadez said. “Data drives research. Research drives policy, funding and programs. And there's a clear connection between the lack of the resources that we have in our [Limited English proficiency] communities because of that disconnect.”
To hear more about how the opioid crisis has impacted immigrant and refugee communities in the St. Louis area — and why current resources and data around opioids miss important numbers and nuances when it comes to those communities — listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast or Stitcher or by clicking the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Ulaa Kuziez is our production intern. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
