SHE’S FIGHTING DRUG DEATHS
Coroner transforms office to help battle heroin epidemic
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When Pam Gay ran for coroner of York County, Pa., heroin wasn’t considered a major public health issue.
The number of heroin overdoses had been fairly steady, 10 to 12 a year. But in 2013, the office investigated 17 overdoses, and Gay’s chief deputy warned, “I think this may be a problem for us next year.” It was. Not a month after Gay took office, the number of heroin deaths had already exceeded the number from the previous year. “That’s when we really knew that we were facing a real problem,” she said.
By the end of 2014, her first year in office, 62 people died from heroin overdoses, ranking mostly rural York County sixth among Pennsylvania’s 67 counties in per capita heroin deaths.
Gay knew then that her role as coroner would change. In Pennsylvania, coroners are charged with determining the cause and manner of unattended deaths. Medical training is not a prerequisite, but Gay had worked as an emergency department nurse and as an educator.
She also had experience dealing with addicts. Her niece had been addicted to alcohol and crack, and Gay and her husband were drawn into her life, raising her children while she struggled with addiction. It gave her “a different perspective” on the issue, she said. (Her niece has been sober for a decade, and they are very close now.)
Gay set about transforming the coroner’s office. She became an advocate for treatment, specifically methadone therapy. She was a leader in the county’s heroin task force. She helped bring a needle-exchange program to the county.
And she campaigned to equip police and other first-responders with naloxone, which reverses the effects of an overdose. The drug had been used in emergency rooms for years, she said. It’s easy to use, it is effective and it could save lives.
Since April 2015, police and first responders have used naloxone to save more than 330 people.
“I’m just doing my job,” she said. “This is the nature of our work. This is what we have to deal with.”