The Northern Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy partnered with the health department on a grant-for 25,000 care kit booklets for every social service agency, treatment provider, reentry services and detention centers around the region.
The booklet covers all the services that NKODCP provides in Northern Kentucky for prevention, harm reduction, treatment, reentry, recovery and family support. The partnership was highlighted at this week’s Kenton County Fiscal Court meeting.
“There are many more services in Northern Kentucky, and we are able to put them on our website,” Director Amanda Peters said. “But these are the main social infrastructure that we have for the continuum of care for the folks that battled substance use disorder in our community.”
Peters said she wanted to make sure they were seeing a big increase in people coming through the programs.
“I think last week, we saw 60 folks in Kenton County and the week before was 85,” Peters said. “These folks are getting Narcan, they’re getting connected to services, vaccines and getting tested for hepatitis, HIV and COVID-19. So, we’re really making a lot of connections there. And we’re taking people directly from treatment to the sites.”
The Lift Up Program is a federal grant-funded program that is between Northern Kentucky Workforce Investment Board, St. Elizabeth healthcare and the Kentucky Career Center. Their data shows that people in this program have not been re-arrested within 30 days.
“It’s a really big number, good for recidivism that we don’t want to see,” Peters said. “These folks are getting into services in a No Wrong Door approach. So, they come in through treatments. They come in through the Kentucky Career Center, come through the detention center or come through other job services, they’re able to get connected into any of the services for Northern Kentucky. So that’s pretty exciting.”
NKODCP collects overdose dispatch records for Boone, Kenton and Campbell Counties. Last year they cataloged 1,963 911 calls for overdoses and were able to provide outreach to 1,148 of those people. They did this with mailers, people calling into the facility and some door-to-door outreach.
In Northern Kentucky, there is an average of 3.1 overdoses per day. Last year they received 1,920 addiction helpline calls, over eight counties, but calls primarily came from Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties.
“For reference, the state helpline which is supporting 118 counties cataloged 3,474 calls for the year and so we are seeing half of that just for the eight counties,” Peters said. “So, the local presence is really helping and we’re able to connect to lots of folks that way and do follow-up calls and family support.”
Synthetic opioids are what NKODCP is seeing the most of in the region. The DEA is doing a One Pill Can Kill campaign to help combat the problem.
“What we’re seeing on street pills is that everything is laced with fentanyl these days,” Peters said. “Northern Kentucky does not see heroin at all. I think last year it was probably Fourth on the list of what we seized from the Drug Strike Force and so what we’re seeing is methamphetamines, fentanyl and cocaine, and then heroin is very, very low.”
Peters said people are going to the streets to get their health care needs for things like Xanax, Vicodin and Valium but they are actually pill presses of straight Fentanyl. The One Pill Can Kill Campaign was created in effort to spread awareness on the issue.
“We’re increasing our Narcan distribution,” Peters said. “Within the last calendar year from last March Northern Kentucky, especially predominantly in Kenton County, has pushed out over 5,000 units of Narcan.”
Because of the increase in Fentanyl overdoses the fatality numbers have risen throughout last year. Peters said they suspect the numbers will keep rising. Fatalities around the state and the nation increase about 50%, whereas Northern Kentucky is around 20%.
One resource NKODCP has worked toward is free Narcan for all law enforcement agencies. This is provided by the Kentucky Pharmacy Association. Any law enforcement agency can fill out a form. There is no standing order or bureaucracy involved. They put in the amount they need, and it gets shipped right to the agency.
“We have outpatient availability we have Sober Living availability as well,” Peters said. “We also have employer resources, lots of folks coming in around reentry. And we now have a list of over 100 employers that do second chance employment. That’s probably going to go up on our websites by the end of the month. And we’re going to push that out to all our transitional living folks and all of our reentry partners and start getting it out to our treatment providers as well to share with the folks as they’re discharging.”
The national percentage for people who receive treatment for their addiction is 12.2%. Some contributions to this low number can be linked to the denial of having a disease; however, the stigma around receiving treatment plays a bigger role.
