Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Opioid funds to be used for new program
Commissioners announce that program will help overdose survivors
County commissioners will use funds from a community event to raise awareness about the opioid crisis.
WEST CHESTER »
The Chester County commissioners on Wednesday announced that they will use funds from a community event to raise awareness about the opioid addiction problems in the county to begin a program that will help overdose survivors and, just as significantly, their families.
Commissioners’ Chairwoman Michelle Kichline said at a board meeting that funds raised through sponsorships and participation in the county-led 2017 Color 5K event totaled $38,000, 50 percent more than the $25,000 that was raised in 2016, the first year of the event in which participants run a course and get doused with colorful powders.
The funds will be used in the county’s Community Outreach and Prevention Education (COPE) initiative that will provide one-to-one support for overdose survivors and their families and friends; overdose prevention information and outreach to first responders, hospital staff, family members and friends; and importantly, expedited admission into detox and a review of all treatment options for overdose survivors who agree to treatment.
“We are pleased with the continuing support the community has for this,” said Kichline. “It is an example of how people can get together to make a difference. This is the last branch of government where you feel like you can really touch people.”
The county already runs a socalled “warm hand-off” program that seeks to get those opioid or heroin addicts who have lived through an accidental overdose into treatment as soon as they leave the hospital. That effort also began with the first Color 5K event in 2016. Nine hundred people participated in the 2017 Color 5K event. This year’s event will likely be held in the fall.
The commissioners heard from members of its Drug Overdose Prevention Task Force, including District Attorney Tom Hogan, county Health Department Director Jean Casner, and Kim Bowman, head of the county’s Department of Human Services.
“It’s a very sad time,” said Bowman, summing up the past year in which the number of deaths from accidental overdose continued to increase. “But there are a lot of good things happening. Chester County is doing all the right things, but it is going to take a while to turn the ship around.”
“We are trying to save as many people as we can, but we know we will lose some,” echoed Hogan, who laid out the basis of the task force: to prosecute dealers, educate students and families, offer prevention services, and equip homes and police stations with Narcan, the anti-overdose medication. “We are one of the first counties in the state to take this inter-disciplinary approach to the
problem.”
In a “good-news, badnews” format, Hogan said that research and statistics showed that opioid prescriptions by doctors, thought to be the original impetus of the opioid addiction crisis, had dropped, and that many physicians were not prescribing only minimal amounts of pain killers to their patients, instead of open-ended scripts. “The doctors are catching on,” he said.
He also said the number of new heroin users is going down nationally as education about its danger increases. Evidence of that, he claimed, is that drug cartels are switching from producing heroin to producing cocaine.
But, he noted, the bad news is that death from overdoses are on the rise.
According to Kichline, in 2017 the number of county fatal overdoses was 133, up 35 percent from 2016. The presence of fentanyl, a powerful opioid used to lace heroin with, is 72 percent in those deaths compared to 43 percent in 2016.
According to the county, COPE is an innovative program that will better ensure opioid overdose survivors being treated in local emergency departments are personally encouraged to enter treatment. An on-call Engagement Team that includes a project coordinator and certified recovery specialist will provide one-to-one support in the hospital emergency department as well as post-emergency department discharge for the opiate overdose survivor and their family or friends.
COPE will also provide overdose prevention information and outreach to first responders, hospital staff and the survivors’ family and friends. It will begin as a pilot in Brandywine Hospital and Chester County Hospital.