Since September 2018, NAMI BI has included Block Island Wellness within its mission. The Wellness Coalition Coordinator, Jill Seppa has joined the NAMI BI Board.

Block Island Wellness, a “sister” organization was supported by state substance abuse prevention funding, and has been subject to strategic changes from RI State Prevention Planning and thus became part of the regional South County Prevention Coalition, where work continues, and Jill is still the BI representative there.  Recognizing the commonality and overlap with part of mental health aims, and how many of the Wellness programs were specific to BI, NAMI BI invited the BI Wellness team to combine with us to help preserve their local knowledge and activity. This has been a fruitful follow-up to our Spring 2017 Mental Health Conference that focused on opioids.

History

[more on site pages from the now obsolete BI Wellness website]

The BI Wellness mission: to educate substance abuse awareness and prevention in the Block Island Community, and promote wellness.

“The Block Island Substance Abuse Prevention and Wellness Coalition” formerly existed and was funded according to previous rules and regulations for Substance Abuse Prevention Organizations in Rhode Island. Even earlier Wellness was known as “The Prevention Task Force”.

As Joel Taylor once wrote in the Block Island Times: “The Wellness Coalition has a seriously deep understanding of the very root causes of drug and alcohol abuse, which are so thoroughly intertwined with mental and spiritual health. they realize it’s crucial to begin working on those things at a young age, and they dedicate a lot of their time to that cause…” [BI Times 11/29/14]

NAMI BI and the island community are glad to continue support for the activities on Block Island in whatever ways we can.