this is the Farmington feed bringing you information from the city of Farmington hi and welcome back to the Farmington feed I'm Karen Haj Nicki the city's Communications specialist and I'm hungry for another episode of the feed I have with me today James Johnson Jr and he likes to go by a JJ an opioid prevention program coordinator with Dakota County Public Health Department hello and welcome to the feed well thanks thanks for reaching out to us about this very important topic that we're going to talk about today it's about opioid overdoses and the none training that that it's going to be held at the Farmington library right yes yeah so first off can you just let our listeners know what you do for the county so again uh James Johnson Jr my friends call me JJ I'm the Dakota County Public Health overdose program coordinator uh just a little bit me about me my background has been in substance use disorder prevention working intervention and treatment recovery last 30 years I am a person in long-term recovery and what that means to me is I've been actively engaged in managing uh abstinence for the last 36 years my main role is to serve as the liaison between the County Board of Commissioners and district one commissioner Mike Slavic is your commissioner and the opio advisory committee there's a committee yes and it's a 17 member commissioner appointed committee okay Tiffany NBO is your district one representative the uh committee is consists of 17 members okay um resident of each district that has lived experience and we Define lived experience pretty broadly somebody might be in recovery from opioid addiction um lived experience maybe they're using opioids as pain management okay or they may have some experience in a family member a lot of people have lost loved ones in Dakota County due to the opioid problem here in Dakota County okay we also have Community Partners healthc care representatives and government and staff members okay that's a lot of different people and a lot of experience on that committee and just for your listeners to know we meet the first Tuesday of every month okay the Northern Service Center at 300 p.m. and it's open to the public okay for sure and if they need to find any of those meeting dates or times they can always check the County website correct a absolutely all right and so your position is this a newer position based off of this committee or yeah the the op settlement money came into the state a number of years ago and has has taken some um some time to filter down to the counties and it was a decision by our state to have it filtered through Public Health okay and the Commissioners agreed through a memorandum of agreement that public health would administer those dollars through the Commissioners the Dakota County opiate response advisory committee supports development and comprehensive and effective countywide response to this opiate crisis it provides recommendation to the county board on the use of the funds for external processes and initiatives Public Health through the money of Dakota County receives through the opiate settlement agreement from pharmaceutical companies and Distributors and is intervening and providing Prevention Services that come in many forms well that's one reason why we're here today to talk about one of those things opioid over dose prevention okay so let's talk about that what what's going on in your role and what are you doing with that so right now the leading cause of death across our country is drug overdose okay we provide education for opioid overdose or the antidote okay across Dakota County and I have some statistics for you and sometimes they can be a little frightening uh for people that haven't been up to date on it yeah but we'll we'll go through though in 202 this is across the country in 2023 well no let's talk about Dakota County okay specifically CU I think your listeners probably are interested is what's going on in their backyard right so in 2023 there were 312 nonfatal opioid related overdoses in Dakota County compared to 299 in 2022 in 2023 there were 48 fatal opioid related overdoses compared to 45 in 202 2 so an increase in 2024 now we only have data that is been confirmed through October of 2024 there's been 46 fatal opioid related overdoses in Dakota County were already exceeding what happened in 2023 so frightening statistic and I did asked our epidemiologist to When I Was preparing for this to look at what's happening in Farmington we didn't go very deep we just looked at what happened between 2021 and 2024 and frankly I was kind of shocked okay cuz I didn't expect that but there's been 10 fatal overdoses six of them were opioid related between 21 and 24 there were 13 suicides but the stunning number was 124 non-fatal overdose related hospital visits that's a lot they're only the visits that the hospitals reported know what else has happened and I I can come back and talk about anything specific that goes around the country but around the county but 124 thank goodness nonfatal overdoses but that is the issue and our solution is nxone okay and tell us what that is and what that does so nxone is a medicine that rapidly reverses opiate overdose immediately like within a minute wow of administration it can quickly restore normal breathing if a person if their breathing has slowed or stopped because of an opioid overdose okay it's important to have nxone available at in the event that you come across someone who might be experiencing an overdose or be non-responsive our recommendation is been that n lockone be in the hands of many Dakota County residents as possible and some people are afraid that uh they won't know how to use it or that they it's a medication so they're you know they don't want to have it on their hand but Minnesota was wise and they created what was called Steve's law it's Minnesota's Good Samaritan law that added n lockone legislation it's named after Steve rumler who passed away from an opiate overdose in 2011 and Good Samaritan laws are put in place to encourage bystanders to intervene in crisis interventions so that basically is saying that they they need to help right we want people to help we want people to be prepared and so we're doing these trainings all over the county and we're inviting everybody from your community to be a part of the trainings as well yeah and there's one coming up here at the Farmington Library actually on February 12th 6:30 at the library okay and then so what do people need to do do they need to registered do they need to just show up how does that work they can register we have a a registration available on the library website we have we we did put some up on our website as well and you can go to the County website and register through the county website or you can just show up okay we're not going to prohibit anybody from coming in we want as many people to get trained as possible on how to use all of the U materials that we provide because we'll be doing training on uh what we call nasal Noone the intermuscular in lockone and Fentanyl test drips oh what's that fentanyl test strips are going to be used for drug users they're going to be able to test drugs to see if there's any fentol in them and I know that's a controversial issue but if we're going to combat this issue in all areas we need to be engaging everybody in the community you know our goal we would love the idea that nobody's using drugs but the reality is they're there and the statistics have shown it if we can avoid and even the non-fatal overdoses because what is happening in the community is some of the drugs people are using are adulterated with fentanyl and car fentanyl which is even a more powerful version of Fentanyl and I I can I don't want to make an assumption but a a lot of people are hearing about Fentanyl and car fentanyl on the news and what that does but it's being infiltrated in all kinds of other medications or drugs that people get out the street or get online however it is and this medication automatically reverses those overdoses okay wow so what if somebody wants to attend they can come do they get a free kit when they come or how does that work yes they do and we offer free nxone throughout the county as well oh just anytime right now yes okay so they could go to the library right now and get some we have uh free neone at five of our Dakota County Libraries burn Haven kosia Pleasant Hill Wentworth and Farmington okay so yeah they can come here who do you say um should have these kits everybody everybody okay cuz some people are like well I don't need that I don't you know I don't know anybody that could potentially do that right correct that's what's the messaging is out there is that you don't know anybody but it is like we wore seat belts when we didn't know anybody got in an accident with a seat belt but we wore seat belts yeah in this is in case of emergency and with the statistics that we see we want everybody to be prepared we want everybody to have a kit and make it available you can carry it in your glove compartment you can carry none nasal in your pocket just in case you come across something and that we never know we attend events where something could happen we just want to be prepared and the best thing is to go to the training so they know what to do correct correct okay so what if they can't come to this training what are their other options well Steve rumler hope network is who public health is um collaborating with to provide these trainings and provide the freed and lock Zone okay there are ways to get trained without having to come to our training you can go online at Steve rum. org and okay you can get uh video trained yeah the kits also come with training okay inside you can there's a QR code you can get training in Somali Spanish and English and soon M okay language as well so you can you can pick up a kit and if you're Savvy you can get training that comes right in the kit oh on your phone so that's easy too you had mentioned to me um earlier there's like a survey as well so what is the survey about and who should take it so the opioid response advisory committee the orac that I talked about a little bit earlier that advisory committee appointed by the Commissioners that meets every month we're looking for input on how better to serve the communities in this opioid crisis so we need the community's input we're looking to get information there's questions that ask you what what you think you would do or what you think is lacking or some ideas because we might not have all the answers or the solutions and so we want to tailor the public health response from Dakota County to each community and that's why I reached out to you because I want to get to all of the areas in Dakota County in the rural areas you know Dakota is made up of the rural metro and we want to get to every corner of Dakota County and we want to know what works in your community okay well well James is there anything else that we didn't talk about that we need to hit reach out to us be a part of it come and see one of our um advisory committee meetings be a part of the solution y give us some ideas of what we can do for sure and they can find that information again on Dakota County's website that's absolutely correct Public Health look for James Johnson not JJ because if they search JJ they wouldn't find you true right but you could just uh search nxone and you can find us oh for sure that's even easier right but how do you spell it that would be the hard part none n a l o x o n e perfect okay well thank you so much for educating us on this important topic before I wrap up today's episode I do want to remind everyone that the community nck Zone training will be held at the perington library on Wednesday February 12th from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. register for this event um either through the Dakota Count's website or our website if you don't register that's okay you can still show up well that concludes another episode of the Farmington feed thank you for listening we look forward to connecting with residents with this podcast if you have any feedback guest requests or ideas email me at communications at Farmington mn.gov don't forget to subscribe to the Farmington feed wherever you like to get your podcasts