CALISTA OETAMA/The Connecticut Mirror - The Connecticut Mirror
•8/18/2026
Mobile methadone units did not exist in Connecticut when Frankie DeJesus started his recovery in 2012. He wishes they did.
DeJesus, a recovery support specialist for Community Health Resources, has spent nearly all his life in Enfield, right by Connecticut’s northern border. After a Percocet prescription for knee pain developed into a dependence on heroin and other opioids, DeJesus began traveling to Hartford’s Root Center to receive methadone, widely considered the most effective treatment for opioid use disorder.
The Root Center, though 20 miles away from Enfield, was the closest methadone clinic to DeJesus’s home. Every day for a year and a half, he would make the 30-minute drive to receive his dose of methadone before driving back to work. Dosing windows were short and often coincided with rush hours. Sometimes, he’d take the HOV lane to ensure he arrived at the clinic in time. Other times, reluctant to break the law, he’d miss the morning window and would have to leave work early to get his dose before the clinic closed.
“It was a huge barrier to my recovery,” DeJesus said.
Beginning this summer, clients struggling to access methadone treatment may be able to receive care more easily. Large mobile units — often referred to as “vans,” though they are closer to RVs — have begun traveling to parts of northeastern and southeastern Connecticut that experience high opioid overdose rates. They are the first state-funded mobile methadone units in Connecticut’s history.
The state has invested more than $4 million, drawn from opioid settlement funds, into the development of the vans. The APT Foundation launched two units in July, serving communities along Greater New Haven and the southeastern shoreline, and CHR’s van will begin traveling across northeastern Connecticut on Aug. 18. Providers and researchers say the vans will expand access to life-saving treatment and reduce the stigma of receiving care for opioid use disorder.
“There’s a lot of people we’re not getting to,” said Kevin Laymon, a recovery support specialist at CHR and the driver of the van. “We’re going to bring it to people instead of having them come to us and struggle.”
CHR’s van will serve Connecticut’s northeastern region, also known as the Quiet Corner. Data from the Department of Public Health shows that, in 2024, Windham reported 62.9 unintentional drug overdose deaths per 100,000 people — the seventh-highest in the state and four times the national average.
Most towns in the northeastern region, which is mostly forest and farmland, have a population of fewer than 10,000. There are only three clinics that offer methadone treatment in the region: two in Windham and another in Putnam.
“I understand the thought process of more people, more resources,” said Selena Perez-Suarez, a CHR clinician serving the van. “But then we have this community that’s overlooked. I think that’s why addiction is so high in this area.”
Methadone, along with buprenorphine and naltrexone, is one of only three FDA-approved medications for opioid use disorder. It reduces craving and blunts pain from withdrawal. As a Schedule II substance, it’s also the most tightly regulated out of the three medications: unlike the two other drugs, physicians cannot prescribe it for pick-up at a pharmacy to treat opioid use disorder.
Instead, clients must travel in-person to clinics certified by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to dispense methadone. Often, this means waking up early to receive a dose in time for work, and many clients in early stages of treatment must make trips every day to mitigate the most severe withdrawal symptoms.
But for many, committing to this form of treatment is easier said than done. In 2024, researchers at Yale University and Virginia Tech University found that some Connecticut residents, such as those living in parts of Middlesex and Litchfield counties, would have to drive at least 45 minutes to the nearest methadone clinic.
The burden is even greater for people who rely on public transit: some, particularly in eastern Connecticut, may spend up to three hours on a bus or train for a one-way trip to the nearest clinic. And this assumes they have access to public transport at all.
There are no trains and only two taxi services covering three towns in the northeastern region, according to Perez-Suarez. Almost all buses serving the Northeastern Connecticut Transit District start running after 8 a.m. and stop by 5 p.m., outside the windows of time when clients typically travel to get their doses.
The state offers non-emergency medical transportation on request but only to those who have insurance to cover those services. Cameron Breen — a street outreach case manager at Liberation Programs, which runs several methadone clinics — also notes that some people who need treatment are homeless or do not have a stable address where they can be picked up.
“Those individuals lacking an address, in a lot of circumstances, are also usually lacking a phone and the ability for (the operator) to contact them to say, ‘Hey, we’re on our way,’” Breen said.
Starting Aug. 18, the van will try to meet those who cannot make it to a brick-and-mortar any other way. CHR workers will first restock the van with methadone at CHR’s office in Putnam. They’ll drive 40 minutes to treat clients near CHR’s clinic in Willimantic, which does not offer methadone treatment, before making stops in other towns. Though they will only determine a final route after assessing need during the first few months of operation, they anticipate making rounds through Plainfield and parts of Killingly.
“The main thing we carry to the Quiet Corner of the state is transportation,” Laymon said. “People can’t get around because of the transit system.”
Mobile methadone units have existed as early as 1979, when a municipal bus program in Amsterdam dispensed methadone to pockets of the city with high drug use. In 1988, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration approved the nation’s first methadone “clinic on wheels” in Brockton, Mass., as a response to the AIDS epidemic. Brockton residents fiercely opposed the construction of brick-and-mortar clinics, but, as the New York Times reported, “The mobile clinic has been largely accepted because it treats the problem, then goes away.”
The DEA continued to approve units on an ad hoc basis until 2007, when concerns about diversion prevented the administration from issuing new licenses. Eventually, the advent of synthetic opioids and historically high overdose rates during the coronavirus pandemic prompted bipartisan efforts to increase access to treatment. SAMHSA to make COVID-era emergency measures such as telehealth screening and unsupervised take-home doses permanent, while a final rule issued by the DEA in 2021 lifted the ban on mobile methadone units.
At least 17 states have launched mobile programs since then, and Connecticut — armed with $185 million in opioid settlement funds, 22% of which are dedicated to increasing access to treatment — is following suit.
“We’ve had to build these carve-outs,” said Benjamin Howell, assistant professor of public health at the Yale School of Medicine and one of the researchers who conducted the travel time study. “This legacy of regulation has been on the books for years — we’re just stuck in the status quo.”
CHR’s van — 33 feet long and 12 feet high, with a front painted lime green — is hard to miss. From Mondays through Fridays, 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., clients will enter from the van’s back entrance. They’ll register at a front desk and receive their dose of methadone, bitter pink liquid in a cup. If they need to, they’ll do case management in a room outfitted with a medical examination table or counseling in a private room near the front of the vehicle before leaving through a side door.
The van’s setup allows every stage of the process to remain private and clients to receive one-on-one care tailored to their needs. By contrast, DeJesus’s treatment process would be quick: walk in, get his dose, drive away. He sought counseling, but counselors at methadone clinics typically have a caseload of 60 to 80 clients each.
“My counselor was rarely ever there,” he said. “I didn’t know what else was available besides methadone.”
DeJesus eventually stopped receiving methadone treatment in favor of trying to white-knuckle sobriety. Periods of relapses and eventual hospitalization for suicidal ideation pushed him to try seeking support again. It would take six years before “life got different,” he said, then better. He attributes this shift to counseling and communities such as his church and long-term recovery support groups and hopes clients can find similar forms of support through the vans.
“Without connection to said communities, I don’t know where I’d be,” he said.
The van’s visibility among those in need may also reduce the stigma surrounding methadone. In 2024, a vocal group of Guilford residents strongly opposed the construction of a methadone clinic run by the APT Foundation, citing concerns about the site’s proximity to schools. The clinic opened with the support of Guilford’s first selectman and without the disruptions to safety that some residents feared.
Amy Di Mauro, senior vice president for adult behavioral health services at CHR, said the organization hasn’t encountered anyone who opposed the van’s operations. Instead, most people she’s spoken to have been supportive.
“There’s opportunity for dispelling myths that lead to the stigma and discrimination of substance use disorder,” she said. “It’s not a moral failing — it’s a medical condition.”
Even as the two vans begin making their way across Connecticut, the issue of access remains contested in Congress. Two bills introduced over the past 10 months may pull access to methadone in opposite directions. The first, introduced last September by U.S. Rep. Erin Houchin, R-Ind., calls for the reversal of the updated SAMHSA guidelines that expanded access to methadone treatment across the country.
“I’m not concerned about that,” Di Mauro said. “It doesn’t have enough support.”
On the other hand, bipartisan legislation spearheaded by Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., in June would allow some doctors to prescribe methadone to patients for direct pickup at a pharmacy. Howell believes the bill would further “normalize” methadone as a form of treatment, as the two other FDA-approved medications for opioid use disorder can be prescribed for pick-up.
Di Mauro is more hesitant, wondering if further deregulation would dissuade people from seeking “clinical services, recovery services and full person care, not just the medication.”
In the meantime, CHR’s team looks forward to the launch of their van on Tuesday. They anticipate a small client pool in the first few months of operation but expect this number to grow as word of mouth encourages more clients to register with the van.
“It’s really just going to take a village,” Laymon said. “That’s the only way to attack the problem: keep initiating new things like this, fresh ideas, because that’s going to make the process easier for people.”
Long-term funding remains up in the air. The cost of running the van is similar to the cost of running a brick-and-mortar clinic, with the added expense of mileage, according to Di Mauro. But she added that CHR has made space for the van in their budget, even after the organization receives its last parcel of opioid settlement funds in 2027.
Perez-Suarez is hopeful that CHR’s strong relationships with communities in the northeastern region will encourage more hesitant individuals to register for the van’s services. Her clients often tell her about their reluctance to get lab tests or go to the hospital, where they say they feel treated as addicts rather than patients.
“So I think something like this is really going to help further get rid of that stigma,” she said, referring to the van. “I think the reason the death rate is so high is because they don’t feel connected to anyone.”
This story was originally published by The Connecticut Mirror and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
