(WOODLAND PARK, Colo.) — Due to an increase in substance use disorders especially since coming out of the COVID pandemic, the Front Range Clinic launched several mobile health units to cover various rural communities across the state.

One of them landed in Woodland Park.

“We all believe in increasing access,” said Ryan Mueller, State Opioid Treatment Authority at Behavioral Health Authority (BHA). “We know that the need is there.”

The mission of these Mobile Health Units (MHUs) is to provide services to smaller, more rural communities.

“People who live in rural communities are often too isolated from all kinds of health services, including mental health and addiction treatment,” said Donna Goldstrom, director of behavioral health services at the Front Range Clinic.

Goldstrom said isolation is also a factor in addiction, which makes these services even more important in smaller towns.

“Addiction is a disease of isolation. We know that. That’s why COVID made addiction so much worse,” Goldstrom said.

Some of their most common treatments have been for fentanyl, and officials said rural communities are often hit harder by this crisis.

“While the urban corridors in our state suffer numbers-wise from more opioid use disorder and more overdose, and more overdose deaths per capita, these rural and frontier communities suffer greater with those numbers,” Mueller said.

The MHU in Woodland Park is open from 10:00 a.m. until 2:45 p.m. on Wednesdays and it is located near the Safeway gas station off Highway 24.

There is also a MHU in Fountain that’s located in the Grace Community Center parking lot at 373 Dale St. on Tuesdays from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

A list of other MHUs can be found here.

Staff with the Front Range Clinic said you don’t need to make a reservation, but you can always give them a call.