by Blake Herzog
MATFORCE, a community coalition leading the fight against substance use and abuse in Yavapai County, is a force to be reckoned with and it’s celebrating its 20th anniversary with a free breakfast event Nov. 14.
Breakfast will be served at 8:30 a.m. for the event at the Prescott Resort and Conference Center, 1500 AZ-69, with the program running from 9 to 10 a.m. RSVPs should be submitted by Nov. 7 by calling 928.708.0100, emailing info@matforceaz.org or visiting http://qrco.de/bgJH86.
“We’ll go through the years from 2005 to 2025 and just hit some of the highlights of things that have happened, and just celebrate those successes,” Executive Director Merilee Fowler says.
MATFORCE has been sending and reinforcing its message through school programs, workshops, presentations, prescription drug disposal and much more since 2005. It’s expanded its reach statewide through partnering with like-minded organizations through associations and summits, and its program for inmate reentry into the local community has spawned counterparts in five more Arizona counties, including Maricopa and Pinal.
“We kind of have become a model for other coalitions and the state has realized it, so we have several large grants where we’re able to fund other large coalitions to support them and their work to emulate what we have done,” Fowler says.
Some of the group’s early leaders are expected to be there to mark the occasion, including former County Attorney Sheila Polk, who still chairs MATFORCE’s board. Past and present employees and volunteers are encouraged to come, as well as anyone else who is interested.
Fowler has been leading MATFORCE since she became its first paid employee in 2006, so she’s been at the forefront of every battle the nonprofit has fought:
“We’re going to talk about different legislative wins that we’ve had, and the work that we started around methamphetamine. But then we had some really terrible times with bath salts and ‘spice,’ and did some really innovate work around that to take care of it. Prescription drugs, we were the first ones in the state to do the Rx Misuse Initiative, getting doctors and emergency departments to change their policies around prescribing opioids.”
