This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in the News & Citizen on Aug. 7.
“We started basically something new and innovative, honestly without really knowing what the heck we were doing at that time, but we kept our eyes open and our ears open, listening to people that had some experience, that could see what we were doing.”
With this remark, Greg Tatro articulated the spirit behind Jenna’s Promise — the substance use disorder treatment organization he and his family founded five years ago after the opioid-related death of his daughter, for whom the organization is named — and alluded to the source of its success.
Outside the former Johnson church the organization converted into a community center four years ago, Tatro was flanked by Jenna’s Promise staff, a bipartisan coalition of supportive politicians, and his family — wife Dawn, son Gregory and daughter-in-law Amy.
The genesis of Jenna’s Promise is a story the family has told many times. Jenna Tatro, in the throes of opioid dependency, in and out of rehabilitation homes, had a seed of a dream to build a program that would work for her and others, before she succumbed to her substance-use disorder in 2019.
That dream, to open a sober home “with a little more substance,” as Greg Tatro put it, began with the Rae of Hope sober home and, in the span of just a few challenging years, shot up, like the organization’s symbolic sunflower, to forever alter their family, the Johnson community and opioid treatment efforts in Vermont.
The Tatros brought in experts like Dan Franklin, who now leads the Vermont Association for Mental Health and Addiction Recovery, and developed a trauma-focused, holistic approach to treating substance use disorders that afforded residents the opportunity to stay far longer than the typical two-week timeframe at other treatment centers.
They melded this holism with a novel village recovery model, bringing together the Tatro family’s business acumen forged in its construction business, G.W. Tatro, to address the underlying material conditions that trap many in the cycle of substance use disorders, by helping them build up their resumes at two Johnson staples — JP’s Promising Goods and Jenna’s Coffee House.
These vertically integrated businesses — which also includes a coffee roasting company — didn’t just provide a leg up for those trying to address substance use disorders and produce revenue for the organization. They also helped revitalize the village of Johnson, even after the flood of July 2023 put others out of business permanently.
“Johnson is a safer place now than it was,” Tatro said. “A lot of the people that were pushing things are gone. They don’t want to be here when there’s so much recovery going on.”
Last year, Greg and Dawn stepped down from leadership roles on the Jenna’s Promise board of directors, though Greg is still involved in the day-to-day operations of the businesses, and Dawn continues her work helping “more people get into rehab in the last couple of years than anybody else in the state,” according to her husband.
Part of the transition away from a mom-and-pop substance use disorder rehabilitation organization includes bringing on Aimée Green as its new executive last fall. With her background in health care administration in behavioral and psychiatric work, she’s been working to bottle Jenna’s Promise recovery magic and codify its practices to prepare the village recovery model for further expansion.
“This isn’t some one-off miracle infrastructure. The partnerships, the blueprint — it can scale, and it should scale,” Green said on Saturday. “Communities across the country are fighting the same battles against addiction, isolation and economic decline, and Jenna’s promise is proof that we don’t have to choose between compassion and practicality.”
Recovery numbers
A report published by the Vermont Department of Health, Division of Substance Use Programs, which funds Jenna’s Promise operations along with private philanthropic efforts, looked at “phase one” of Jenna’s Promise and how it operated in fiscal years 2023 and 2024.
During those two years, the organization served an average of 31 people per year across three different sober homes. Of those who left the program, 47% were considered “successful program completions,” a number much higher than the national average, according to Gregory Tatro.
The report noted the most common reason for early departure from the program is a return to substance use.
This work comes at a cost, however, which the health department estimated is five times that of other state-funded recovery programs. But the uniqueness of the Jenna’s Promise model might make direct comparisons difficult. According to the report, it costs Vermont Foundations for Recovery in Essex Junction about $10,000 per bed, while Jenna’s Promise costs over $68,000 per bed.
Nonetheless, the Jenna’s Promise business network generated $56,000 in revenue for the organization in 2024, Green said, though the organization has struggled with staff retention over the past few years, according to its phase one report, especially in the wake of the floods which hit Johnson hard.
Partners who have worked with the organization over the past years reported satisfaction with the responsiveness to problems that may have arisen in the partnership. A minority of respondents shared concerns about a “lack of operating procedures,” an issue that Green has specifically worked to rectify.
“I like to use the term ‘bake.’ Let’s fully bake the model,” she said. “Let’s ensure we have all of our processes, systems, policies, procedures — all that stuff — fully in place, so that when we do expand, whether on this footprint or to other communities, we can share that.”
New horizons
The Vermont Department of Corrections already refers many women to the program, where, as Gregory Tatro said, they’re able to address the root causes of their anti-social behavior for a fraction of the cost of incarcerating them.
Green hopes the organization can expand its bed count with a new sober home right on the hill near Jenna’s House. She is also eager to bring the Jenna’s Promise to other towns, and perhaps even Vermont’s population centers.
The week prior to celebrating their five-year anniversary, Green and other members of Jenna’s Promise — along with state officials — met with One Brattleboro, a municipal leadership group working to address the challenges presented by, among other factors, substance-use disorder.
“Brattleboro is a great little place to visit, but there’s a lot of need,” Green said.
The organization continues to garner attention and praise at the state and federal level, thanks in part to Gregory Tatro’s agnostic interest in presidential politics, which has garnered Jenna’s Promise rare bipartisan praise. Tatro will quote a conversation with Republican Chris Christie in one instance and talk about his relationship with New Jersey Democrat Corey Booker in another. Saturday’s anniversary featured speeches from state lawmakers like Rep. Jed Lipsky, I-Stowe; Lt. Gov. John Rogers, R-Glover; and a keynote speech from Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Shelburne, the Senate majority leader.
While some current federal policy may seem to directly inhibit the work the organization is trying to do, Jenna’s Promise aims to begin accepting Medicaid insurance just as severe cuts to the program were mandated in the federal budget. Tatro believes his big tent approach can help people of all political stripes see the value in funding harm reduction.
It’s this willingness to help anyone and everyone see the Jenna’s Promise vision that both Green and Tatro believe will be key to growing one sunflower into a field.
“(My parents) helped blaze the trail,” Gregory Tatro said. “Now, it’s our job to put the pavement down, put the road markings and the guardrails up and the signs.”
