Overdose fatality review team forming in county

Mike Wolanin | The Republic A view of the hallway leading to the entrance of the Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress Bartholomew County Hub in Columbus, Ind., Monday, June 15, 2020. Mike Wolanin | The Republic

LOCAL officials are planning to form a multi-disciplinary group to review all overdose deaths and suicides in Bartholomew County as fatal drug overdoses continue to rise to the highest level on record.

The Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress, or ASAP, has taken preliminary steps to form a community-wide suicide and overdose fatality review team, said ASAP Executive Director Sherri Jewett.

The group would review each overdose death and suicide to examine what happened, what gaps may exist in local prevention efforts and develop data-informed prevention initiatives to prevent future deaths, Jewett said.

Bartholomew County Coroner Clayton Nolting said he plans to be involved with the group. “I’ve committed my office’s resources, analytics and data,” he said.

Jewett said the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department, Columbus Regional Health, CRH’s Treatment and Support Center (TASC), among others, also have expressed interest in forming the group, which is expected to meet for the first time in the next couple weeks.

“We’re really excited about that,” Jewett said. “That will give us an opportunity as a community group to look at every overdose that happens and identify patterns and trends that we might be able to put things in place for to try to lower the number of overdoses.”

The review team also will look at suicides, as “almost always, there’s some type of substance use at the time of suicide,” Jewett said.

Currently, there is, on average, about two to three overdose deaths and one suicide each month in Bartholomew County, Jewett said.

As of Friday, there had been 35 overdose deaths in the county, the highest number ever recorded locally in a single year and up from 33 during all of last year, according to the Bartholomew County Coroner’s Office.

This is third consecutive year that overdose deaths in Bartholomew County have reached the highest level on record. Currently, the county is on pace for around 42 overdose deaths this year, compared to 17 in 2018.

Besides the review group, ASAP is planning to expand programming for people ages 45 and up who are struggling with substance use disorder, as people in that age group make up a significant number of those who have died from overdoses since 2017, Jewett said.

ASAP is working with CRH, Mill Race Center and other community partners to implement, among other things, a community wellness program called “WISE,” which stands for Wellness Initiative for Senior Education.

Launched in 2017, ASAP is a community-wide response to address substance use disorder, including the opioid crisis, in Bartholomew County. ASAP was formed through a partnership between the Columbus and Bartholomew County governments and Columbus Regional Health.

“One of the things that ASAP has done this years was really to do a review and analysis of the ages of the people that are overdosing,” Jewett said. “…Forty-five percent of the people that have overdosed since 2017 in Bartholomew County are 45 or older.”