Healthcare professional typing on laptop. Photo provided | National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Written by Belinda Rickman
You may not know what public health providers do until you need them. COVID-19 has shown just how important Public Health is to overall health of the Kentucky public. In recent years it is still ever present that the opioid crisis has hit Kentucky hard. Public health officials here in NKY and in Frankfort have made great strides in addressing this. Last year deaths dropped by 30.2%, marking a third consecutive year of a decrease in drug overdose deaths. I would like to emphasize the efforts of Public Health professionals in this neighborhood and the reasons for optimism regarding the continued reduction in drug overdoses. I want to do this by highlighting three programs that NKY public health offers like naloxone training, drug testing strips, and needle exchanges. Supporting this with research I hope this inspires individuals to participate and engage with them in hopes to further decrease the effects the opioid crisis and addiction has had on Kentucky and NKY.
The NKY public health department offers Naloxone training as well as Overdose education. A study in 2025 by Larissa Laskowski et al. looked at how training in Naloxone administration and overdose education can help to decrease the mortality associated with overdose. The study focused on general knowledge of naloxone, the appropriate time to administer naloxone, signs an overdose has occurred, and some stigma training. They found that those that attended training sessions had their knowledge of naloxone and when to administer it went from 61.6% to 100%, they also found that the stigmatization scores of participants decreased from 14.62 to 13.23. Overall, this study was positive in showing that the more people are trained the confident they are in intervening if needed and decreased the stigma about individuals who are using. Getting trained can be the difference between a recovery from an overdose and a death that could be prevented. The more people that are trained the bigger an impact can be made on opioid-related fatalities.
NKY Health also offers free test strips for fentanyl and xylazine. A study from 2018 by Krieger et al. found that individuals with a positive result were more likely to be older, be a part of the unhoused population, be and injection drug user, have witnessed an overdose, be a heroin user, have concern about drugs being laced with fentanyl, and have concern with overdose. On the other hand, positive results were associated with a change of overdose risk behavior, confidence in using the test strips, and the desire to use them again. Of the 62 participants that used these strips 31 had positives tests. Knowing what is in your drug overall reduces your risk for an overdose. While this may not prevent usage it helps to bring awareness to those that do use that their drug supply may not be what they thought it was helping to prevent potentially fatal events.
The last program to highlight is that of the Syringe Access Exchange Program. To emphasize the importance of this program I want to use two journal articles. In 2013 Esther Aspinall et al. found that these programs do help support a decrease in HIV transmission but suggests that this is only one arm of an intervention to reduce both HIV and injection risk. Martin Kåberg et al. in 2020 looked at the exchange programs and over time found that individuals who participated in these programs did have a significant reduction in injection risk behaviors. This same study placed an additional focus on those at a high levels of injection risks including low education level, young people, female gender, being unhoused, amphetamine usage, those not in therapy, and individuals that are HIV negative but Hepatitis C positive. I think that NKY Health are positioned to help these highlighted at risk populations. During these programs the health department offers referrals to addiction treatment, testing for various infectious diseases (Hepatitis, HIV, and Syphilis), pregnancy tests, naloxone distribution, and harm reduction supplies.
I do believe that reducing the deaths associated with opioids is possible, and in association with programs here in NKY our community has the resources and ability to come together and really make a difference. The NKY Health Department really wants to support those experiencing addiction while empowering individuals to get trained to help those experiencing addiction the naloxone training, drug testing strips, and syringe access exchange program all further this goal. I want this to be a call to action for individuals struggling with addiction or those with loved ones struggling with addiction to connect with your community support is here and waiting to help.