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The UNSHAME Kentucky Community Impact Committee (CIC) is a board of local community leaders dedicated to ending the addiction stigma. The objective of this committee is to be a resource for the campaign, representing CBOs and the needs of the general public; the committee will be asked for feedback on work being done in the campaign, as well as asked to provide insight and direction for continuous improvement.
If you have any addiction stigma related topics that you would like discussed in an upcoming CIC meeting, please email unshameky@shatterproof.org.
Dr. Melissa Anderson, MD, PharmD, serves as the Director of Public Policy and Advocacy for BrightView Health, an outpatient addiction treatment organization with 58 active facilities operating across 5 states. In this role, Dr. Anderson engages and establishes partnerships with community stakeholders, government agencies, state and federal policymakers, and third-party payers. In addition to her work at BrightView, Dr. Anderson volunteers for several recovery advocacy organizations including Shatterproof, Faces and Voices of Recovery, and the Kentucky Recovery Advocacy Project. Prior to joining BrightView, she worked in the biotechnology industry with a focus on developing and marketing long-acting medications for opioid use disorder. Dr. Anderson earned both her doctoral degrees in Medicine and Pharmacy from the University of Kentucky and resides in Lexington.
Sandra serves as the Addiction Services Medical Coordinator at Primary Care Centers of Eastern Kentucky (PCCEK). Through her various roles at PCCEK, Sandy has been instrumental in developing programming and services for families struggling with addiction. Sandy began work with Pregnancy and Beyond, a program offering behavioral and medical treatment for pregnant and parenting women with substance use disorders (SUD). Soon after assuming this role, she assisted in growing this program to treat not just women, but men and entire families. Sandy then partnered with the community including the local hospital, health department, syringe service program, court system, law enforcement, and jail to expand the clinic's efforts to the community. In her work coordinating a Quick Response Team (QRT), Sandy assists victims and families within 24 hours of an overdose. She also works towards overdose prevention through community Narcan distribution and linkage to Casey's Law resources, which she advocated to get grant funded and brought in house at the clinic.
Early in her nursing career, Sandy worked in the nursery of a local hospital and developed a passion for working with babies who had Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and their families. Since then, Sandy's passion has continued to grow alongside her developing career. Sandy and her wife Joanne have five children that were adopted through the foster care system. Her purpose in life is loving people into the best versions of themselves and has proven to be both personal and professional in her pursuit.
Jessie Burnett (she/her) has worked directly with those suffering with SUD for nearly 20 years. She is currently building a Harm Reduction Department for Norton Audubon Hospital, where she has worked as an ICU nurse for the past 5 years. Between her new position within the hospital and the opportunity to participate in UNSHAME KY, she is living her purpose.
Jessie lives with her two cool kids (12 & 8), 2 pugs, and 2 cats. It's a lot. In her free time, Jessie is an avid (compulsive) gardener and music enthusiast. She is proud to share that she is long term recovery and looks forward to contributing to the effort to shift how we view addiction and those suffering from it.
In Lak’ech ala K’in. I am another yourself.
Katie Fields serves in the role of a Faith-Based Community Liasion for the City of Louisville. She assists the Faith Community in the steps of moving someone in addiction from crisis to career.
She also creates space to educate and equip faith leaders with community resources. The goal is to help eradicate the shame and stigma of those seeking help for substance use and for those living in recovery to find a safe community to thrive in.
Kamala Glenn-Taylor currently serves as the Director of Outpatient Services for The Ridge Behavioral Health System in Lexington, KY. She is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist by profession and holds certifications as a Certified Dialectical Behavior Therapist and Certified Clinical Trauma Professional. She has worked in the addiction/ recovery field as a clinician for the majority of her career, working in residential, inpatient and outpatient treatment settings.
Kamala is currently a PhD candidate at Northcentral University pursuing her doctorate in Medical Marriage and Family Therapy. In addition to this role, Kamala also serves Jesus is the Answer Hope Campaign (JAHC) as their Clinical Director for pro bono services offered to the community. In this role she facilitates individual therapy services and wholistic wellness groups, specifically the CREATION Life program. She is a trained facilitator for the CREATION Life program developed by Adventist Health Systems.
Kamala is also co-CEO of KW Ministries which aims to help people who have a âDesperate Cryâ through resources including devotional series, motivational blogs, and therapy services in addition to other services. She is married with three children. Kamala enjoys reading in her spare time. Her favorite quote comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, âWhat you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.â
Fred Mills is a person in long-term recovery from substance use disorder. He was born and raised in Martin County in Eastern Kentucky where he now lives with his wife and their two children. Fred is a licensed clinical alcohol and drug counselor (LCADC) and a licensed professional clinical counselor (LPCC) in Kentucky. He is employed by the University of Kentucky as a Targeted Assessment Opioid Use Disorder Specialist and has also worked as a substance use disorder counselor for Addiction Recovery Care in Louisa, Kentucky since 2011. Fred is a charter member of Eastern Kentucky People Advocating Recovery (EKPAR), a grassroots organization with the mission of addressing stigma associated with alcohol and substance use disorders and eliminating barriers for those seeking recovery. He has spent the past 16 years working with leaders in the faith community, criminal and family courts, medical community, and school system, helping to educate and advocate for those suffering from opioid and other substance use disorders.
Billy is the Program Manager for twelve (12) Young People in Recovery (YPR) chapters in the state of Kentucky and is over six (6) years in long-term recovery. In his role at YPR, he helps make communities recovery ready and lead the implementation of YPR's EPIC life skills curriculum at five treatment facilities. Billy also serves as the Co-Chair for the Louisville Host Committee and is a District Committee Member of Alcoholics Anonymous, District 29. He is continuing his education to better serve his community at Northern Kentucky University in their Peer Support Specialist Program.
Alan Reed is a retired educator, serving students as a high school and college teacher, school principal in both rural and urban areas, and is a recently retired Kentucky School superintendent. Reed led a team of highly motivated board members, principals, teachers and parents through extensive transformation across the school district. Partnerships were forged with nine regional colleges and universities to form "Indian University' where high school students could take up to two years of college courses prior to leaving high school.
In 2018, Alan was appointed by the Fiscal Court and County Judge Executive in Richmond/Madison County, Kentucky to help form a partnership of substance abuse treatment facilities across the region, Eastern Kentucky University, state agencies and local industry with the goal of treating and training Madison countians with substance abuse disorders in lieu of constructing yet another jail to punish rather than educate and treat.
Alan joins the UNSHAME Kentucky CIC after the Reed family was directly impacted by the opioid crisis with the loss of his son, Brandon, in October 2021 after a 20-year battle with OUD.
UNSHAME Kentucky is brought to you by the Kentucky Opioid Response Effort (KORE) in partnership with Shatterproof. The campaign is funded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky's Cabinet for Health and Family Services Department for Behavioral Health, Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities.