09/14/2026
❤️🩹 250+ Voices—and Growing- PLEASE SIGN‼️
https://c.org/TZ5grNMmLx ⚠️
I opened my petition hoping people would understand why this mission matters. To already see more than 250 people add their names has touched me more than I can put into words.
Thank you. Truly. 🥺❤️🩹
I am asking Congress to support the Matthew Isaiah Initiative and establish a national, evidence-based standard for emergency departments caring for people experiencing opioid use disorder, opioid withdrawal, or opioid overdose‼️
I am a registered nurse, community health advocate, and a mother who lost my 25-year-old son, Matthew Isaiah, to fentanyl poisoning. My professional experience and my family's loss have brought me to one urgent conclusion: we already have evidence-based treatments, dedicated healthcare professionals, recovery organizations, public-health programs, and community resources. The problem is that these pieces are not consistently connected.
We don't need to reinvent healthcare.
We need to bridge the gaps and pull everything together.
The emergency department can be one of the most important opportunities to intervene. Evidence shows that medications for opioid use disorder are effective treatment, and randomized research has shown that emergency-department initiation of buprenorphine with coordinated follow-up can substantially improve early engagement in addiction treatment. Yet access to evidence-based treatment and continuing care remains inconsistent across the country.
The proposed Emergency Department Recovery and Stabilization Act would create a national framework so that patients presenting with opioid overdose, withdrawal, or opioid use disorder have a fair opportunity to receive compassionate, evidence-based care—regardless of their ZIP code.
The framework calls for appropriate clinical assessment and stabilization; evidence-based withdrawal treatment and medications for opioid use disorder when medically appropriate and accepted by the patient; naloxone access and overdose education; stigma-free, trauma-informed care; shared decision-making; recovery navigation and warm handoffs to continuing treatment; workforce education about emerging threats such as fentanyl, carfentanil, nitazenes, and other evolving substances; and federal support to help hospitals implement these practices.
This is not about telling physicians or nurses how to practice medicine. Clinical judgment and patient choice must remain protected. It is about making sure healthcare professionals have the education, resources, clinical pathways, and community connections necessary to give patients the best opportunity possible.
The initiative also proposes the Matthew Isaiah National Emergency Care Network—a national learning and coordination system that would help emergency departments access current clinical guidance, emerging drug-threat information, treatment and recovery resources across the country, and shared quality-improvement knowledge.
We will measure what works through a National Outcomes Framework, protect patient privacy through de-identified quality data, and continuously improve the standard as evidence and the illicit drug supply evolve.
I am not asking Congress to guarantee recovery. No law can do that.
I am asking Congress to help guarantee the opportunity.
An opportunity to be treated with dignity.
An opportunity to have withdrawal treated as a medical condition.
An opportunity to receive evidence-based treatment.
An opportunity to leave an emergency department connected to continuing care rather than facing an uncertain future alone.
Matthew did not get another chance.
I cannot change that. But together, we can fight to make sure the next person has a fair one.
Please sign this petition and stand with families, healthcare professionals, people in recovery, and communities across America in asking Congress to establish: ⬇️
https://c.org/TZ5grNMmLx ⚠️
A Standard of Care Everyone Deserves.
For Matthew. For every family. For every life we still have the opportunity to save. ❤️🩹
