>> I'm Jane McCauley, reporting from Madison.
>> In health news, good news, the centers for Disease Control
and Prevention reports a more than 10% decline in drug deaths
this year for the first time after decades of steep
increases. Wisconsin mirrors the downward trend. There certainly
has been an all out push to save lives from law enforcement
interdiction efforts to harm reduction efforts like Narcan on
the ground locally, the Medical College of Wisconsin also helps
communities conduct overdose fatality reviews to look
holistically at the victims, to help others stay alive until
they can get treatment. La Crosse County has been
conducting such reviews since 2018. Pelosi love is from the
county health department. She joins us now. And Paula, thanks
a lot for being here. >> Thank you so much. It's an
honor to have this discussion. >> So he's a la Crosse County.
Also seen a reduction in overdose deaths has as has been
the case nationally and statewide.
>> Well, our rate in 2023 was the highest that it's ever been.
So, you know that was end of 2023. When we're looking at 2024
we're behind the numbers that we saw last year at this time. So
we're hopeful that the total numbers will be less than, you
know, 2023. But we don't know that yet. We've still got a few
months of 24 to get through. >> When you're conducting an
overdose fatality review, what are you looking at in that
person's life? >> We're looking at early
substance use. We're also looking at trauma that they may
have experienced. You know, were they a party to a home where
other substance use was going on? Did they have particularly
difficult schooling? Did they move a lot? You know, did were
they a part of a broken family, that people may have heard of
the term ACS, which is adverse childhood experiences. And we
know that those there's, there's like ten different experiences
and we know those experiences make children's lives that much
more difficult. So we look for that. We aren't calling them
aces, but we look at the growing up history of the person. If we
have access to that, we also look at how much they moved.
There might have been medical problems that people have had.
We've had several people who have had head injuries, and we
know that that's a concussion. We know that that also impacts
thinking and coping abilities that young people have. And then
we look at involvement with, with treatment, law enforcement,
if they've been incarcerated at all. We're looking at all of
those kinds of things, to look at opportunities where,
prevention couldn't be walking down that same path in
the future. >> Give us a sense of who makes
up the team. >> So the team is a combination
of there's probably 12 to 15, professionals and community
group. So law enforcement, we have someone from the judicial
system. We have some treatment, people who are involved in
treatment. When we have people from a, a school setting,
whether it's K-12 or post-secondary education, we
educational setting as well, we have have, a pharmacist who we
can consult with whenever we need to. Our medical examiner
and then fire department staff, who are often the first
responders or respond when, an overdose. 911 call is called in
within the city of la Crosse. >> So you spoke to some kinds of
changes that have been effected coming out of these reviews.
What's an example of one of those tangible changes?
>> One of the changes is a jail release kit that's provided to
all people who have been discharged from the county jail.
We were noticing in doing and conducting reviews that within
the first couple of months after getting out of jail, if the
individual returned to their former lifestyle, they were at a
great risk of overdose. And so a jail release kit was something
that was a was put together by some of the groups that or
agencies that are represented on the team. And so it includes
Narcan. It includes, a rescue mask. So for providing rescue
breathing, that's one example, another example is,
acknowledging that we might have a particularly, particularly,
contaminated, supply of drugs in our community because the
thought now is that there's no pure substance, even substances
like meth, are often laced with fentanyl or xylazine in the
community. describes reducing the stigma of
drug addiction as an important prong. Why
>> I think it's important to talk about it in the community
and not have people look down on folks who are using substances.
And in order to do that, we need to talk about it openly in the
community, people sometimes have bad feelings about harm
reduction. Well, why would you prevent people from overdosing?
Because it's about saving their lives until they're ready to
take that next step towards treatment. I also think that we
need to acknowledge that many people, not all, but many people
who are, attracted to substance use are attracted because
they're struggling with some other condition, something else
that has a lot of stigma in our community and probably state and
nationwide is mental health. I also think that we need to talk
about, people who overdose in our community aren't just
unsheltered people. They are people who have jobs, who have
homes, might have college educations. They just are caught
in that cycle. That addictive cycle of substance use and that
drive, that addiction is really, really strong. And so they might
want to quit. But it's one more, one more experience with a
substance. And that might be the experience that has the fentanyl
in it. That then is leads to them having an unintentional
overdose. overdose.