Small business owners, industry leaders, law enforcement officers, teachers and even other elected offices like city councilpersons—these are some of the most common professions that people have before becoming a county mayor in Tennessee. But it may surprise you that a fair number of our county executives were EMTs, paramedics or first responders before seeking public office.
The group of people dying of overdoses at the highest rate, by far, are men in their 30s–50s. This group is also statistically less likely than others to ask for help. This is one of the biggest reasons why it can be difficult to implement effective prevention strategies targeting working-age men.
CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control recently released the Mapping Injury, Overdose, and Violence Dashboard.
The Gibson County Opioid Board received six applications from local organizations, requesting funding for programs that would:
New National Association of Counties cohort joins state associations of counties to share best practices in implementing opioid settlement funds
Overdose Fatality Review, or OFR, is a fairly new and yet already proven strategy for identifying gaps in recovery ecosystems. In other words, you bring together people from healthcare, law enforcement, criminal justice, harm reduction services and more to jointly examine cases of fatal overdoses and find out how these people fell through the cracks.
Last year, the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) was charged with studying the impacts of vaping/e-cigarette use in persons under 21 years of age, as youth vaping rates have climbed significantly over the last ten years.
Late last year, Maury County Commission approved the spending of $920,770 in opioid settlement funding, abating the opioid crisis in their community from multiple angles.
But it’s more than just the broad and comprehensive approach that caught our eye at SMART. The formal and transparent procedures of the Maury County Opioid Abatement Committee have made it so that any local resident can follow along and see exactly how these dollars are being allocated.
