Cerro Gordo County health officials in first steps of utilizing opioid settlement funds

MASON CITY — The Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health is in the first steps of planning out how to utilize funding related to the settlement of a class-action litigation against the manufacturers and distributors of opioids.

The department’s deputy director Karen Crimmings says the department’s activities started in May with the staff starting to focus on a number of areas.  That includes youth education.  “Prairie Ridge is sending a couple of individuals to training so they can begin doing some prevention programming in the schools next year. We’ve got two individuals going to the schools with positive youth development which will also compliment that and really looking at making sure those youth understand the risks of opioids, and not just that but really positive youth development and looking at other things beyond just drug use and negative behaviors and how they can build up their characters.”

Crimmings says they are also looking at naloxone replacement across the county. Naloxone can treat narcotic overdoses in an emergency situation. “We are currently surveilling who has naloxone in our community, who is currently distributing. It does sound like Friends of the Family, North Iowa Mutual Aid, and the homeless shelters currently have that along with law enforcement. We’re waiting, the FDA did approve over-the-counter. What they are doing right now is repricing it, putting new labels on it, so it’s not available for us to access at this point.”

Crimmings says most counties statewide are in the first stages of figuring out what they’ll do with their cut of the settlement funds. “I think it’s in its infancy stages at this point. Every county is going to be doing things a little bit different with whatever their community needs are, but I do hope, and I do foresee, that there should be some sort of coordination statewide because it’s all the same messaging.”

Crimmings says they’ve been looking at one Iowa county’s opioid prevention program as things are assembled here in Cerro Gordo County.  “One that we’re looking at is Linn County. They’ve been dealing with this for quite some time, so we’re looking at a lot of their resources. It kind of fits our needs. So we’re just trying to take what we can there.”

Crimmings made her update during the meeting of the Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors earlier today.