I sat listening Wednesday to Terri Nau and Christa Hyson as they talked calmly about visits with heroin-overdose victims in their homes in Quick-Response Teams.
I was anything but calm.
Hyson recalled visiting an apartment building in Cincinnati, harassed by some men at the doorway as she, first responders and a community worker from Talbert House looked for a woman who recently had overdosed. They found her in the parking lot smoking with a group of people. She was pulled out to be told that were people who want to help her and to provide encouragement.
This is what communities are doing — highly targeted efforts using precision data to engage in some of the most difficult areas of Ohio.
Quick response teams are visiting recent victims, and they’re becoming more common around the state. The Lucas County sheriff has had a similar approach. The Mahoning County Sheriff will do the same.
Nau is with Talbert House, a non-profit that helps the poor, homeless and those trapped in the heroin net. Hyson is with the Cincinnati Health Department. They’re also using a powerful heroin dashboard created by the city that helps everyone direct resources to neighborhoods and street corners at targeted times of the week
Nau has used the dashboard to direct resources to Lower Price Hill and Mount Washington and to think in new ways to reach people. People who need help the most often are not tuned into conventional information systems such as government and news outlets,.
So what does she do?
I’ll lay that out along with several other solutions in play in other communities as the Ohio Media Project/Your Voice Ohio pursues new approaches to helping turn around the heroin crisis.
A few facts about the gravity: From 2010 through 2015, more than 9,000 people died of opioid overdoses in Ohio. Opioid includes heroin, prescription drugs and fentanyl. In 2016, more than 4,000 more died, and we’re on pace to hit that number this year. That means that in two years, we’ll have as many die of opioid overdoses as we did in the previous six years.
Opioids change the chemistry of the brain, pushing users into a situation that requires intervention. Those dying are overwhelmingly men average and median age of about 40. There are no numbers on how many have been saved.
We’re spending millions of dollars on resuscitation kits.
What can we do to deter that first use, what can we do to remove the triggers for using again, and what can we do to keep people alive until they can be moved into full recovery?
Those are some of the question’s the Your Voice Ohio project will explore.
Meanwhile, Columbia Journalism Review offered four basic facts for journalists that are worthwhile for everyone.
