Will County participates in Governor Rauner’s Opioid Task Force listening tour

Lt. Governor Evelyn Sanguinetti and Illinois Department of Public Health Director Nirav Shah co-chaired a public hearing hosted by the Governor’s Opioid Prevention and Intervention Task Force in Chicago earlier this month. The task force is visiting communities all over the state to gain insight and find partners for the governor’s Opioid Action Plan in response to the state’s escalating opioid overdose epidemic. Will County’s Director of Substance Use Initiatives Dr. Kathleen Burke was invited to be on a panel to discuss the response the county has been making in response to the issue.

“I applaud the Lieutenant Governor for leading these important hearings to learn how this epidemic is affecting all parts of our state and what we are doing locally to fight opioid abuse,” said Will County Executive Larry Walsh about the task force. “We have been addressing this issue for some time and it is nice to be recognized for our efforts by the governor’s office. We are fortunate to have Dr. Burke leading our efforts in Will County.”

The task force has hear from experts from four key groups in the state: personal stories, law enforcement, health care and behavioral health providers, and local response. The objective of the Opioid Action Plan is to reduce the amount of opioid-related deaths by one third over the course of the next three years. Burke shared how Will County has been making efforts which include expanding Narcan training and Safe Passage participants.

“The message from many of these groups was the lack of access to treatment,” Burke said. “These testimonies were powerful and clearly identified the gaps in service dealing with the opioid epidemic in our state. We have Narcan which is keeping people from dying from overdose and we have the Safe Passage program with our police departments to directly connect people to treatment, but we have to increase our capacity to save lives. Addiction is a medical disease that requires medical treatment and we do not have enough beds to offer people detox services and treatment.”

Other panelists included John Roberts, co-founder of the HERO group and a partner in Will County efforts, Chief of Mundelein Police Eric Guenther, and Dr. Michael Nelson, emergency medicine and addiction physician at Cook County Health and Hospitals System. Each member of the panel spoke about their efforts but all presentations came back to the need for increased access to treatment.