A coalition of people concerned about drug abuse will gather on the Providence City Hall steps Tuesday morning to announce an effort to improve access to addiction treatment –– by changing public attitudes.

Called the Closing the Addiction Treatment Gap Coalition, the group was formed through a three-year, $600,000 grant from the Open Society Institute, founded by financier George Soros, a longtime sponsor of efforts to change drug policies in the U.S.

Rhode Island is one of eight localities around the country chosen for this effort, which will push for more public funding and better insurance coverage for addiction treatment, and also look for efficiencies in the treatment system.

But above all, the coalition hopes to spark outrage about society’s response to addiction, said Dr. Josiah D. Rich, professor of medicine and community health at Brown University and principal leader of the local effort..

“This disease makes swine flu look like a joke. This is a tremendously destructive disease,” he said. “Yet we’re not addressing it as the epidemic, as the magnitude of the disease, would warrant.”

Because of the high rate of relapse in drug treatment, there’s a common perception that treatment doesn’t work, said Neil Corkery, executive director of the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Association.

But in fact relapse is a feature of the disease –– and addiction treatment works as well as or better than treatment for any other chronic illness, such as diabetes or obesity, he said.

“If the public got it, if they understood these messages,” Rich said, “they’d be a lot more focused on addiction treatment and rational, sensible use of public and private resources.”

The City Hall kickoff comes days after a federal study found that Rhode Island had the highest rate of illicit drug use in the nation, and that many who need treatment don’t get it.

In addition to the treatment association, the 25 members of the coalition include groups representing hospitals, nurses, emergency doctors, and mental-health and substance-abuse treatment centers.

According to the coalition, 100,000 Rhode Islanders suffer from addiction but only 12 percent get the treatment they need. Instead, many people end up in prison or in emergency rooms, at costs much higher than treatment programs.

Pulling together a diverse group can help identify better ways of using existing resources, Rich said.

The coalition’s initiatives may include encouraging primary-care doctors to look for incipient drug or alcohol problems and developing an alternative for street inebriates picked up by police and now brought by ambulance to emergency departments.

According to Rich, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which was meeting in Providence, on Monday adopted a resolution calling for more money for substance-abuse treatment and prevention, alternatives to prison for nonviolent drug offenders, and other measures proposed by the coalition.

For more information, go to www.closethegapri.org or www.soros.org/initiatives/treatmentgap.

ffreyer@projo.com