Regional Center Hosted Events
The Great Lakes ROTA-RC offers a virtual learning community featuring opioid & other substance use, as well as mental health, treatment, and recovery education events for professionals, para-professionals, volunteers, and students in a variety of fields supporting the Great Lakes community. These virtual learning opportunities will be hosted by Great Lakes ROTA-RC’s Cooperative Extension partners in Region 5, and feature a range of experienced professionals.
Grief Through Different Lenses: Survivors and Communities
During this session participants will identify the main social and structural contexts of drug overdose death bereavement and learn about the real world impacts of a Minnesota school-based program called Growing Through Grief.
- Demonstrate an understanding of research on interrupted mourning and complex grief reactions in relation to drug overdose death.
- Learn about proactive programming to address underserved public health needs through Growing Through Grief and apply statistics related to prevalence and cause of childhood bereavement in their work setting
- Apply knowledge on research to explore interventions to better support individuals, families, and communities experiencing overdose death bereavement.
Presenters: Dr. Allison Schlosser and Nicole Barnes
Date: Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Time: 10:00 – 11:15 AM CST/ 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM EST
Location: online webinar
Please contact Kelly Cabral (cabral.48@osu.edu) with any questions
Survey Says: Leveraging School-Community Partnerships to Promote Student Well-Being
During this session, participants will review youth survey data and learn about considerations for building successful school-community partnerships in their communities.
Learning Objectives
- Encourage engagement between schools and community partners to benefit all children
- Understand general trends in youth health and wellbeing in the region
- Interrogate the implications of proposed CDC solutions for schools
Presenters: Lauren Doyle
Date: Friday, May 2, 2025
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM CST/ 12:00 AM – 1:00 PM EST
Location: online webinar
Please contact Amanda Coorough (amanda.coorough@wisc.edu) with any questions
About the Presenters
Allison Schlosser, PhD, MSW, is a medical anthropologist with a background in social work and public health research. She is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Allison specializes in the intersections of culture and substance use and societal responses to drug problems in the United States. Her research draws on in-depth ethnographic and other qualitative research methods to examine lived experiences of residential treatment, medication treatment for opioid use disorder, risk reduction services, drug overdose survival, and drug overdose death bereavement.
Nicole Barnes is an 18-year employee of Park Nicollet Health Care Services and joined the Park Nicollet Growing Through Grief Program in the Summer of 2017 as the Program Manager. She has many years of experience in social work and healthcare leadership. Her current role includes partnering with nine Growing Through Grief counselors and sharing Growing Through Grief impact that is happening across the 16 partnering districts where support is provided.
Lauren Doyle Lauren is a project assistant for the Great Lakes ROTA-RC and a graduate student at the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work. Passionate about creating supportive environments in schools, she is dedicated to meeting the needs of all students. After graduation, Lauren will be a full-time school social worker, working with middle and high school students in West Michigan.
