The fight to contain Kentucky’s opioid epidemic is taking many forms and it’s requiring public and private organizations to forge new partnerships.
Monday in Lexington, a first-ever Bluegrass Forum spearheaded by the state Health and Family Services Cabinet aimed to train participants in prevention, treatment, and mobilization. While awareness of heroin abuse is on the rise – with President Obama recently announcing more funding for community health centers and medication-assisted treatment services – Dr. LaTonia Sweet with bluegrass.org notes that it’s a problem that’s been taking root for more than a decade.
"I'm from southeast Kentucky, where we've been dealing with this since the late 90s and a whole generation of people are gone pretty much due to violence, motor vehicle accidents, and overdose deaths related to this epidemic," the chief medical officer says.
Sweet says one goal is to change the perception of addiction.
"We have come a very long way in the fact that we actually have this forum today. We wouldn't have seen that ten years ago," she says. "But we do have a long way to go in understanding that this is actually a disease and not a moral failing, and that we need to treat it as a disease. These are patients, not junkies."
A similar gathering is scheduled in Corbin Tuesday.
Overdose deaths in Kentucky have steadily risen over the past decade to more than 1,000 a year, according to the Office of Drug Control Policy.
