From left, David Beyel Jr. of OAR13, Shore Medical Center President David Hughes, Jason Dugan of OAR13.
SOMERS POINT Shore Medical Center received $20,000 from the proceeds of the 2023 Kyle Evans Memorial Golf Outing. The annual event focuses on preventing new opioid addictions, raising awareness, and helping people realize they are not fighting their addiction alone. The tournament will return to Harbor Pines Golf Club on Friday, April 26.
David Beyel Jr. and Jason Dugan, members of OAR13, a nonprofit focused on attacking the opioid epidemic, presented a $20,000 check to Shore Medical Center President David Hughes on March 12.
OAR13 stands for Opioid Addiction Recovery, with the 13 in honor of their friend Kyle Evans, who wore #13 as a star player on the Ocean City High School soccer team. In 2005, Evans led the Ocean City High School boys' soccer team to an undefeated season the only one in Cape-Atlantic League history. Evans passed away on Nov. 1, 2017, shortly after his 30th birthday.
Sadly, I think it would be difficult to find someone who hasn't had the opioid epidemic affect their lives in some way. And, we're realizing more and more, it often happens in silence, Beyel said. Kyle was among the top athletes in the country, was incredibly smart, and the most competitive guy you'd ever meet. Losing Kyle was another example of how this can affect anyone. We've lost far too many friends and classmates to something we feel doesn't get a powerful enough response and resources.
Beyel said the organization selected Shore to receive the funds to help with patient care and prevention.
We also hope the attention generated by the golf outing helps remove the stigma of addiction, so people don't battle in silence and feel more comfortable to look for support from family and friends," he said.
To date, OAR13 has donated $60,000 to Shore Medical Center to help in the fight against opioid abuse.
With the generous donations to Shore from OAR13, we have made significant technological advances to improve the processes and procedures related to pain medication management, Hughes said. We thank them for their support and all they do to help our community through the opioid crisis.
We continuously work to improve the programs we have in place, in addition to implementing new opioid-related initiatives, Assistant Director of Pharmacy Shannon Burke said. We are focusing on decreasing opioid use altogether by encouraging the use of multimodal pain management strategies, as well as using medications taken by mouth whenever possible. We have also begun using a next-generation software solution to proactively identify and prevent controlled substance diversion. All of the progress we have made would not have been possible without the generous donations from OAR13.
The funds support initiatives implemented at Shore Medical Center, including:
