Researchers at the University of Kentucky are gaining insight into drug use and recovery from a group that knows the subject really well.

Survivors Union of the Blue Grass is a community advisory board made up of current drug users or those who run non abstinence recovery UK.

Researchers consult with the group Monthly.

Organizers say the board has helped shape the trajectory of some research projects.

The purpose of this Community Advisory Board is to really fill in a gap in research.

So you have you have researchers that are that are wanting to research the effects on on drugs, on, you know, what substances are doing to individuals.

However, a lot of the times the people doing the research might not know the best ways to be able to interact, to engage with folks who are either close to a substance use disorder or resolving it, or in the in the midst of use, whether it's controlled or chaotic.

These two entities need to be kind of talking to one another and not just talking, but informing.

Important to be able to work with people who are actively using versus for certain types of research versus maybe someone who has had 20 years of sustained abstinence may not be able to provide the same amount of the same type of input.

Researchers are coming in and talking to this group of people who feel a lot of a lot of people in the group have felt ostracized or pushed away or not heard.

And we put in protocols and safeguards.

And one of those is before anybody is a visitor and a researcher, they have to be voted in.

And it's a unanimous vote.

So everybody says, yes, If one person says no, that individual will not be allowed to enter the group due to privacy.

So we've had 20 different groups visit.

The survivors know the Blue bluegrass in total, and so they've come from all over UK campus.

But for example, the College of Medicine Nursing, public Health, education, and they come researching lots of different topics.

For example, barriers to medications for opioid use, disorder, community acceptance of syringe service program.

As a person with lived experience and living experience in this, you know, world, it is empowering.

Anything that I went through good, bad, indifferent that that it can now be used for a better purpose.

I feel like I walk away each each meeting surprised and amazed at something that takes place.

We want to have a full, robust kind of representation of our whole commonwealth.

We need the voices of all pathways, but we're going to know this.

This, if we're going to cut into this epidemic, it has to be, you know, death by a thousand Pathways to Recovery.

Survivors Union.

The Blue Grass has 12 active members.

They say there is currently a waiting list of people who want to join the board.