Health care providers, law enforcement, community coalitions, recovering addicts and others will present a community forum next week aimed at taking a regional approach to the heroin addiction problem on Martha’s Vineyard.

The forum is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Monday, June 6 at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Performing Arts Center.

Organized by a working committee of people on the front lines of the epidemic, the forum comes at a time when fatal opioid overdoses are claiming lives at an unprecedented rate, according to Massachusetts Department of Public Health statistics and local addiction recovery providers.

“In recent months we have seen the community has reached a real tipping point to say, okay, it’s time to really mobilize, and face a problem that is out of control, out of proportion, not acceptable, not tolerable, and threatens to get worse,” said Marina Lent, Chilmark health agent and one of a number of people who helped organize the forum. “A lot of these problems we are facing cannot be solved in a single solution or a single discipline. It’s not the hospital’s problem, it’s not a Community Services problem, it’s not a 12-step program problem, it’s not a law enforcement problem,” she said.

Jill Robie-Axtell, executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard YMCA, also serves on the Dukes County Health Council, which has appointed a subcommittee to work on solutions to opioid addiction. She said there is a consensus among those involved that a collaborative approach to treatment and recovery is missing, but she is hopeful the forum will take a step toward that goal.

“I feel kind of confident now we’re kind of coming together, putting our resources together,” Ms. Robie-Axtell said. “This forum is the best attempt that I’ve seen to make some progress. You’ve got very, very smart, competent, capable people that have their hearts in making a big difference. I think it’s a matter of making a commitment to share a common vision, and getting the community to do that. I feel traction, that that’s starting to happen.”

The county health council recently surveyed and interviewed a wide range of people from organizations involved in various aspects of enforcement, treatment and recovery. They included police departments, volunteer groups, businesses, churches and health care workers. A central theme that emerged was a lack of coordination among Island organizations.

In a presentation summarizing the study, survey organizers cited communication, fragmentation, lack of confidentiality and lack of transparency as problems in existing resources. According to the presentation, one survey participant said, “our resources don’t work together, we have turf wars.” Nearly all the survey participants felt the available options for treatment and recovery on Martha’s Vineyard were poor or unacceptable, according to survey organizers.

“The barriers have been pretty consistent over the last few years,” Ms. Robie-Axtell said. “We’re really good at talking about them, but we haven’t been as effective at being able to put together something to make a difference. You have people coming at it from a lens of recovery. You come at it from being a family member, or an employee of the state, the lens of community service. The challenge is to get together and be able to have a vision for a solution, or at least step towards a solution.”

One goal of the community forum is to hear about strategies working elsewhere that might transfer to Martha’s Vineyard. Among the people scheduled to speak is James Derick, president of the Support for Addicts and Families by Empowerment (SAFE) coalition. The grass roots community group was formed just a year ago. It serves six towns in Norfolk and Worcester counties, two of the regions in Massachusetts hardest hit by the heroin epidemic.

SAFE trains volunteers called angels who take action when police or prosecutors reach out to SAFE.

“If someone has an overdose, and it is successfully reversed, we are contacted,” Mr. Derick said. “We go and visit that family the next day. We offer them resources. We put them into our system for follow up. If they’re not ready for help that night, maybe they’re ready four months later.”

The group also operates weekly drop-in centers. Volunteers confidentially evaluate addicts who want help, and get them into medical detoxification or treatment programs on the spot. The group operates eight such centers, and each center gets an average of two people into treatment every week, according to Mr. Derick. A telephone hotline has also been successful, getting about eight people into treatment every week.

“They’ve hit their bottom, and it’s time for them to go, they willingly want to go to detox,” Mr. Derick said. “We’re trying to break the cycle of recidivism, of relapse, of individuals coming in and out of the systems. It reduces crime, it increases the chance to get treatment.”

He said each element of SAFE is an idea borrowed or taken from other successful community organizations. When West Tisbury police chief Dan Rossi reached out to him, as an acquaintance from his frequent summer vacations on the Island, he said he was glad to participate.

“There’s kind of a learning curve to getting a coalition up and running,” Mr. Derick said. “I’m passing that help on. People take what they like and leave the rest. Every community is different. Every community has different needs.”

Often, a crisis triggers a request for help. Edgartown police Det. Michael Snowden, a member of the Martha’s Vineyard Drug Task Force, said police are focusing on heroin distributors but often find addicts in trouble.

“We’re looking for the distributors,” he said. “When we do that we run into the victims of the drug distribution business. There’s a split second where we kick down a door and go into a house and we run into a heroin addict who is there to buy drugs, and they ask for help. We don’t have the answer. In domestic violence cases, we can give a woman a phone number and they can get help immediately. We feel completely helpless, we want to help, we want to have answers, that’s our job. This is a very unique problem that we’re facing.”

He said he thinks the forum is a step in the right direction.

“The main focus is everyone leaves their titles at the door, everyone gets on the same page, brings all if their different experiences together,” he said. “I hope this forum can come up with some sort of plan, or a least a protocol. It would make our jobs a lot easier.”