PORT ANGELES — The mayor of Port Angeles wants to see a community-based plan put in place to address Clallam County’s heroin and opioid addiction epidemic.
Mayor Patrick Downie’s goal is to create a group involving everyone — both professional and civic organizations and groups — who are fighting the opioid epidemic in Clallam County.
“This is such a pervasive problem in our community, so devastating it deserves our fullest and best effort to try to combat the terrible effects of substance abuse and opioid issues,” Downie said after presenting the idea at a Board Of Health meeting Tuesday.
“We think there’s merit in having a meeting with all the players.”
While it’s difficult to know how many people use opioids such as heroin or abuse others such as prescription pain relievers in Clallam County, statistics show the county’s opioid addiction problem is worse than the state average.
In 2014, there were 292 opioid associated hospitalizations per 100,000 people in Clallam County, 84 more than the state average, Clallam County Health Officer Chris Frank has said.
The death rate was at 13.4 per 100,000 people, while the state average was eight.
So far this year there have been 60 overdoses and at least six deaths. Of the overdoses, 69 percent were attributed to heroin. The county doesn’t have data for previous years because it only recently started tracking that data.
The community-based effort would coincide with a three-county effort to develop opioid addiction data on the Olympic Peninsula, said Mark Ozias, Clallam County commissioner.
Collecting the data is Olympic Community of Health, one of nine accountable community of health regions in the state that is part of the state’s plans for implementing the Affordable Care Act. It covers Clallam, Jefferson and Kitsap Counties.
The community-based idea is one that Downie said he hasn’t seen before. He knows Clallam County isn’t unique in its addiction problems, but doesn’t know of other communities who are working on the same bottom-up approach.
“Is there some community of our own shape and size we can emulate and learn from?” he asked.
While Downie’s goal is to start the community-based group, he doesn’t see himself as its leader.
He said there are much more qualified people in the community that could lead the group, but Downie wants to get the conversation started.
A meeting date, place or time has not been set and it isn’t yet known what organization would be facilitating the group, he said.
But officials don’t yet know all those who are fighting the battle against opioid addiction.
That is exactly why Ozias is supporting Downie in his endeavor.
“We know there are a lot of agencies and people who are working really hard to try to address this problem from a lot of different angles,” Ozias said.
“I don’t think there’s one person who could sit down and write a list of every organization (in Clallam County) working in some capacity to address this issue.”
Olympic Community of Health is working on what Frank called an opioid report card or dashboard.
“They are pretty far ahead with this,” he said. “I think it’s going to set a framework for what needs to be done.”
Said Ozias: “I’m very hopeful the combination of having some good data along with the structure and organization is going to allow us to put some pieces together quickly and do some creative thinking.”
________
Reporter Jesse Major can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56250, or at jmajor@peninsuladailynews.com.
