(Aug. 11, 2016) More than 7 percent of 12th graders in Worcester County have used heroin at least once, according to a recent Maryland Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
Opioid and especially heroin abuse appears to be on the rise locally, as evidenced by the most recent data from the Maryland Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.
According to a quarterly report on overdose deaths released in June, heroin-related deaths in the state have increased more than 180 percent during the last decade.
In 2007, 77 deaths were attributed to heroin use between January and March. Last year, that number was 190. This year, for the first time, more than 200 people have died in the state during the first three months of the year because of heroin use.
To combat that growing trend, the Worcester County Drug and Alcohol Council, a program of the county health department, formed an Opioid Awareness Task Force along with a campaign launched last year, dubbed “Decisions Matter.”
“Last year when the governor set up his opioid task force to address the opioid addiction epidemic, all the county health departments got to work with their own local communities to develop their own awareness campaigns around that issue,” Worcester County Health Department Prevention Director Kat Gunby said.
Those campaigns, she said, focused on treating addiction and preventing overdoses. Locally, the task force included workers at the health department, along with State’s Attorney Beau Oglesby and members of the Drug and Alcohol Council.
“The Decisions Matter campaign is an awareness campaign about the importance of making wise decisions in order to prevent opioid misuse and abuse, and taking actions such as securing your medications [like] prescription painkillers so that unintended people don’t get access to them and start using them or abusing them, and to create and awareness that misuse can lead to addiction to opioids.”
A year into the campaign, Gunby said organizers are hoping to “breath some new life” into the prevention movement by starting another program, called “Be a Hero, Save a Life.”
“Over the course of the past year, we’ve been promoting Naloxone and Naloxone training. The whole idea behind them is to educate and train people about how to use Naloxone to bring someone who unintentionally overdosed back to life, and to be able to get help and get the next steps to be in treatment and recover from addiction,” Gunby said. “You can ‘Be a Hero’ and ‘Save a Life’ by getting trained in Naloxone if you know a friend or a loved one who is misusing or abusing opioids or heroin.”
Free Naloxone training classes are held every second Friday from 9-11 a.m. and every fourth Friday from 1-3 p.m. at the Snow Hill Health Department, and every fourth Wednesday from 6-8 p.m. at the Ocean Pines Library.
The class includes a voucher for a free Naloxone kit. To register, call 410-213-0202, extension 100.
“This campaign is really to promote training and be an overall awareness campaign and to drive people to action, and we’re trying to gear up to do more this coming fall,” Gunby said. “We’re going to be using that as part of our promotions to do more public service announcements and education, and a bigger push coming up at the end of August leading up to Overdose Awareness Day, Aug. 31 and Recovery Month in September.”
Gunby said that would include open houses at the county’s two main addictions centers, the Center for Clean Start in Salisbury and the Worcester Addictions Cooperative Service Center (W.A.C.S.) in West Ocean City.
“We’re going to have an open house with family friendly activities in September, and tours and Naloxone training,” she said. “It’s all just a piece of the puzzle, trying to educate the community and help reduce addiction overdoses, and help people be aware of the treatment services available in our county.”
She said heroin and opioid addiction was a “national issue,” with a notable increase in opioid abuse and a “startling” increase in heroin abuse and overdoses.
The health department has distributed more than 7,500 brochures related to its anti-heroin campaigns in local middle schools and high schools, and at churches, pharmacies, hospitals, and at various community events. More than 1,500 information cards on Naloxone training were also distributed.
“I think that a lot of people across the country in rural and urban areas have been affected by this, because they know somebody who has misused prescription drugs or has used heroin, and I think a lot of people are aware of the problem on a personal level,” Gunby said. “Because of the partnership between government, addictions service treatment, public health and law enforcement across this state, especially, people are becoming more aware that it’s an expanding [issue] and that there’s help.
“People don’t have to be alone and they can recover from this,” she added. “We’re trying to get information out about the signs of dependency and where people can go to get treatment in a compassionate, open, judgment-free, stigma-free environment.”
For more information, visit www.worcesterhealth.org/resources/76-mhandadd-section/1172-decisions-matter.
Opioid and especially heroin abuse appears to be on the rise locally, as evidenced by the most recent data from the Maryland Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.
According to a quarterly report on overdose deaths released in June, heroin-related deaths in the state have increased more than 180 percent during the last decade.
In 2007, 77 deaths were attributed to heroin use between January and March. Last year, that number was 190. This year, for the first time, more than 200 people have died in the state during the first three months of the year because of heroin use.
To combat that growing trend, the Worcester County Drug and Alcohol Council, a program of the county health department, formed an Opioid Awareness Task Force along with a campaign launched last year, dubbed “Decisions Matter.”
“Last year when the governor set up his opioid task force to address the opioid addiction epidemic, all the county health departments got to work with their own local communities to develop their own awareness campaigns around that issue,” Worcester County Health Department Prevention Director Kat Gunby said.
Those campaigns, she said, focused on treating addiction and preventing overdoses. Locally, the task force included workers at the health department, along with State’s Attorney Beau Oglesby and members of the Drug and Alcohol Council.
“The Decisions Matter campaign is an awareness campaign about the importance of making wise decisions in order to prevent opioid misuse and abuse, and taking actions such as securing your medications [like] prescription painkillers so that unintended people don’t get access to them and start using them or abusing them, and to create and awareness that misuse can lead to addiction to opioids.”
A year into the campaign, Gunby said organizers are hoping to “breath some new life” into the prevention movement by starting another program, called “Be a Hero, Save a Life.”
“Over the course of the past year, we’ve been promoting Naloxone and Naloxone training. The whole idea behind them is to educate and train people about how to use Naloxone to bring someone who unintentionally overdosed back to life, and to be able to get help and get the next steps to be in treatment and recover from addiction,” Gunby said. “You can ‘Be a Hero’ and ‘Save a Life’ by getting trained in Naloxone if you know a friend or a loved one who is misusing or abusing opioids or heroin.”
Free Naloxone training classes are held every second Friday from 9-11 a.m. and every fourth Friday from 1-3 p.m. at the Snow Hill Health Department, and every fourth Wednesday from 6-8 p.m. at the Ocean Pines Library.
The class includes a voucher for a free Naloxone kit. To register, call 410-213-0202, extension 100.
“This campaign is really to promote training and be an overall awareness campaign and to drive people to action, and we’re trying to gear up to do more this coming fall,” Gunby said. “We’re going to be using that as part of our promotions to do more public service announcements and education, and a bigger push coming up at the end of August leading up to Overdose Awareness Day, Aug. 31 and Recovery Month in September.”
Gunby said that would include open houses at the county’s two main addictions centers, the Center for Clean Start in Salisbury and the Worcester Addictions Cooperative Service Center (W.A.C.S.) in West Ocean City.
“We’re going to have an open house with family friendly activities in September, and tours and Naloxone training,” she said. “It’s all just a piece of the puzzle, trying to educate the community and help reduce addiction overdoses, and help people be aware of the treatment services available in our county.”
She said heroin and opioid addiction was a “national issue,” with a notable increase in opioid abuse and a “startling” increase in heroin abuse and overdoses.
The health department has distributed more than 7,500 brochures related to its anti-heroin campaigns in local middle schools and high schools, and at churches, pharmacies, hospitals, and at various community events. More than 1,500 information cards on Naloxone training were also distributed.
“I think that a lot of people across the country in rural and urban areas have been affected by this, because they know somebody who has misused prescription drugs or has used heroin, and I think a lot of people are aware of the problem on a personal level,” Gunby said. “Because of the partnership between government, addictions service treatment, public health and law enforcement across this state, especially, people are becoming more aware that it’s an expanding [issue] and that there’s help.
“People don’t have to be alone and they can recover from this,” she added. “We’re trying to get information out about the signs of dependency and where people can go to get treatment in a compassionate, open, judgment-free, stigma-free environment.”
For more information, visit www.worcesterhealth.org/resources/76-mhandadd-section/1172-decisions-matter.