http://www.fayobserver.com/news/20171106/fayetteville-to-participate-in-national-opioid-abuse-project
Fayetteville Observer
Fayetteville and nine other jurisdictions across the country are participating in a new initiative that seeks to help stem the nation’s opioid epidemic through interactive mapping, data sharing and collaboration.
The 10 jurisdictions were chosen because they have shown early success in combating opioid abuse, said Jeremiah Lindemann, who is coordinating the project through New America and a mapping software and analytics company called Esri.
Opioids, including prescription pain pills and heroin, killed more than 33,000 people in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The New York Times reported that drug overdoses now kill more people than guns and car accidents.
New America, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, hopes to lower the statistics with an interactive map that puts a face on the people who died of an overdose, Lindemann said.
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Lindemann, who has worked for Esri for 16 years, said he got interested in the mapping project after his brother died of an opioid overdose about 10 years ago. The map, which is in its infancy, includes one entry from the Cape Fear region — a touching family tribute to Maxwell Lambert, a Clinton resident who died of an overdose in 2014.
By putting a face on the people who died, Lindemann said, he hopes the project will lead to better policy decisions and outcomes, including more resources and treatment programs. He said mapping the epidemic is his way of making people and communities more aware of the problems.
Fayetteville was chosen for the project because it has done its own mapping of opioid abuse in which first responders or police used the drug Nalaxone to reverse overdoses, Lindemann said.
A study last year found that Fayetteville had the 18th-highest rate of prescription opioid abuse in the country.
Rebecca Jackson, strategy and performance analytics director for the city of Fayetteville, has been working with police and emergency responders who developed local maps that pinpoint opioid overdoses.
“The idea is to be able to use GIS tools to attack the ongoing epidemic,” Jackson said. “You can’t fix what you don’t know.”
Lindemann said Fayetteville and the other jurisdictions will participate in monthly webcasts with New America, where they will share best practices and other information for fighting the opioid epidemic.
Fayetteville has been a national leader in the war against opioids. Last year, Mayor Nat Robertson and Elizabehth Goolsby, director of the local Veterans Affairs Medical Center, teamed up to form an opioid task force, which has led to an opioid-addiction hotline and a drug-awareness campaign. State Attorney General Josh Stein and a ranking member of the Obama administration sat in on task force meetings.
Fayetteville became one of the first cities in North Carolina to equip police with the overdose-reversal drug Nalaxone. And it was one of the first jurisdictions in the country to use the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program — or LEAD — which diverts drug addicts, prostitutes and other low-level criminals from prosecution into treatment, housing, education and job-training programs.
Jackson said the city has applied for a 2017 Mayors Challenge grant through Bloomberg Philanthropies. The charitable foundation offers $100,000 grants to 35 cities with a population of more than 30,000. The grant money is focused on solving a specific problem facing a city.
Staff writer Greg Barnes can be reached at gbarnes@fayobserver.com or 486-3525.