Richard Smith serves as Director of Community Programs at Healing Transitions, where he oversees initiatives focused on overdose prevention, harm reduction, recovery outreach, homelessness response, transportation access, and family support. His work centers on meeting individuals where they are — often long before they’re ready for traditional treatment — and helping them find pathways toward stability, connection, and recovery.

 

Born and raised on the coast of North Carolina in Pamlico County, Richard’s journey into this work is deeply personal. Following multiple shoulder surgeries at the start of the opioid epidemic, he became addicted to prescription opioids, a struggle that eventually led to homelessness. After finding recovery through Healing Transitions, he transformed that experience into a lifelong mission of service and advocacy.

 

Richard believes in building systems of care that recognize recovery often begins on the “front porch” of outreach — through trust, consistency, and human connection. Having worked both on the frontlines and now in leadership, he holds a simple but powerful conviction: overdose prevention saves lives, but peer support is what moves people forward.

Under his leadership, Community Programs continues to expand low-barrier approaches to care through partnerships with Wake County Behavioral & Public Health — including a long-standing collaboration with Wake County EMS — as well as hospitals, public health agencies, local & state organizations/non-profits, OTP’s and outreach teams across Wake County and the state. His philosophy is simple: keep people safe, connected, and alive long enough for hope to take root and a better life to feel possible.

 

Richard is currently completing his degree in Psychology at East Carolina University — a goal he first set 25 years ago and is now finishing while leading his teams full-time. One of the things he values most about Healing Transitions is its ability to offer a full continuum of care in one place, from outreach and harm reduction to long-term recovery and family support.