KU professor discusses opioid crisis problems, solutions

Spirit on Tap Series event on March 26

Kutztown University professor Christine “CJ” Rhoads will speak at Spirit on Tap on March 26 at 7 p.m. at the DoubleTree Hotel in Reading. The event is free and open to the public.

KU President Kenneth S. Hawkinson previously spoke at the “Spirit on Tap” series in November of last year, focusing on “Higher Education in Contemporary Culture.”

The topic of Rhoads’ discussion is titled “The Opioid Crisis: Problems and Solutions.” She will specifically discuss how and why there is an opioid crisis, how opioids affect various parts of the body, the difference between types of opioids and how to decrease pain within the body without opioid usage.

Rhoads is a successful entrepreneur, business owner, consultant, community advocate, speaker and author. She currently runs a nonprofit called Health, Prosperity, Leadership Institute and is also CEO and President of HPL Consortium, a technology development company helping small groups and causes.

Rhoads has lived in chronic pain since 2002, when she was injured in a devastating car accident, but she doesn’t let her chronic pain stop her. She instead tirelessly worked to discover how pain works and learned to short-circuit the pain mechanism through integrative health practices so that she can completely ignore it and live a full, productive, successful life.

Although she figured out what she needed to do to stay out of pain, she initially didn’t understand the mechanism of how it worked; that’s where her research began. She studied pain, the pain mechanism, integrative healthcare and opioids in order to figure out exactly what caused her pain to begin with, as well as how she could help others prevent or solve the same problems.

This led Rhoads to further research what economic issues caused the opioid crisis to begin with and why it is so hard for society in general to defuse the opioid crisis in the future. It also led her to discover that few doctors know much about the new research on opioids, the pain mechanism, or how to help their patients beyond surgery. But there is a solution to pain and addiction; we just need more people to understand how it works, which is what Dr. Rhoads has set out to accomplish.

Sponsored in part by the DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton and other individual contributions, Spirit on Tap’s purpose is to encourage theological discussion, explore alternative views, and stimulate dialogue around issues of faith, spirituality, culture and social justice.

Updates to the Spiritual Exploration programming include the Interfaith Dialogue Committee meeting on March 21, at 10 a.m. at Queen City Family Restaurant in Reading, as well as the rescheduling of the Spirit on Tap program, “The Future Isn’t What It used to Be,” for May 21.