The Farmington Feed

Announcer: 00:01

This is the Farmington Feed, bringing you information from the city of Farmington.

Caryn: 00:05

Hi, and welcome back to the Farmington Feed. I'm Caryn Hojnicki, the city's communications specialist, and I'm hungry for another episode of the Feed. I have with me today James Johnson Junior and he likes to go by JJ, an opioid prevention program coordinator with Dakota County Public Health Department. Hello and welcome to The Feed.

JJ: 00:20

Well, thanks.

Caryn: 00:21

Thanks for reaching out to us about this very important topic that we're gonna talk about today. It's about opioid overdoses and the naloxone training that that it's gonna be held at the Farmington Library, right?

JJ: 00:32

Yes.

Caryn: 00:33

Yeah. So first off, can you just let our listeners know what you do for the county?

JJ: 00:37

So again, James Johnson Junior. My friends call me JJ. I'm the Dakota County Public Health Overdose Program coordinator. Just a little bit me about me. My background has been in substance use disorder prevention, working intervention and treatment recovery last 30 years.

JJ: 00:54

I am a person in long term recovery and what that means to me is I've been actively engaged in managing, abstinence for the last 36 years. My main role is to serve as liaison between the county board of commissioners and District 1 Commissioner Mike Slavik as your commissioner and the opioid advisory committee.

Caryn: 01:14

Oh, there's a committee?

JJ: 01:16

Yes. And it's a 17 member commissioner appointed committee.

Caryn: 01:20

Okay.

JJ: 01:21

Tiffany Nearboth is your district 1 representative. The committee is consists of 17 members.

Caryn: 01:29

Okay.

JJ: 01:31

Residents of each district that has lived experience and we define lived experience pretty broadly. Somebody might be in recovery from opioid addiction. Lived experience maybe they're using opioids as pain management. Or they may have some experience in a family member. A lot of people have lost loved ones in Dakota County due to the opioid problem here in Dakota County.

Caryn: 01:58

Okay.

JJ: 01:58

We also have community partners, health care representatives, and government and staff members.

Caryn: 02:04

Okay. That's a lot of different people and a lot of experience on that committee.

JJ: 02:08

And just for your listeners to know, we meet the 1st Tuesday of every month

Caryn: 02:12

Okay.

JJ: 02:12

At the Northern Service Center at 3 PM and it's open to the public.

Caryn: 02:16

Okay. For sure. And if they need to find any of those meeting dates or times, they can always check the county website. Correct?

JJ: 02:21

Absolutely.

Caryn: 02:22

Alright. And so your position, is this a newer position based off of this committee or

JJ: 02:28

Yeah. The the opiate settlement money came into the state a number of years ago and it's taken some, some time to filter down to the counties.

Caryn: 02:39

Okay.

JJ: 02:39

And it was a decision by our state to have it filtered through public health. And the commissioners agreed through a memorandum of agreement that public health would administer those dollars through the commissioners.

JJ: 02:54

The Dakota County Opiate Response Advisory Committee supports development and comprehensive and effective county wide response to this opioid crisis. It provides recommendation to the county board on the use of the funds for external processes and initiatives. Public health, through the money of Dakota County, receives through the opiate settlement agreement from pharmaceutical companies and distributors and is intervening and providing prevention services that come in many forms.

Caryn: 03:25

Well that's one reason why we're here today to talk about one of those things.

JJ: 03:28

Opioid overdose prevention.

Caryn: 03:31

Okay. So let's talk about that. What what's going on in your role and what are you doing with that?

JJ: 03:37

So right now the leading cause of death across our country is drug overdose. We provide education for opioid overdose or the antidote across Dakota County and I have some statistics for you and sometimes they can be a little frightening for people that haven't been up to date on it.

Caryn: 03:58

Yeah.

JJ: 03:58

But we'll go through those. In 2020, this is across the country, in 2023, well no, let's talk about Dakota County specifically because I think your listeners probably are interested in what's going on in their backyard.

Caryn: 04:10

Right.

JJ: 04:11

So in 2023, there were 312 non fatal opioid related overdoses in Dakota County compared to 299 in 2022. In 2023, there were 48 fatal opioid related overdoses compared to 45 in 2022, so an increase. In 2024, now we only have data that is confirmed through October of 2024, there's been 46 fatal opioid related overdoses in Dakota County. We're already exceeding what happened in 2023.

JJ: 04:49

So frightening statistic. And I did ask our epidemiologist to, when I was preparing for this, to look at what's happening in Farmington. We didn't go very deep we just looked at what happened between 2021 and 2024 and frankly I was kind of shocked because I didn't expect that. But there's been 10 fatal overdoses. 6 of them were opioid related between 21 and 24.

JJ: 05:16

There are 13 suicides but the stunning number was a 124 non fatal overdose related hospital visits.

Caryn: 05:25

That's a lot.

JJ: 05:26

They're only the visits that the hospitals reported.

JJ: 05:29

We don't know what else has happened and I can come back and talk about anything specific that goes around the country, but around around the county, but a 124, thank goodness, non fatal overdoses.

Caryn: 05:42

Yeah. For sure.

JJ: 05:43

But that is the issue and our solution is naloxone.

Caryn: 05:47

Okay. And tell us what that is and what that does.

JJ: 05:50

So naloxone is a medicine that rapidly reverses opioid overdose immediately, like within a minute

Caryn: 05:56

Wow.

JJ: 05:56

Of administration. It can quickly restore normal breathing if a person, if their breathing has slowed or stopped because an opioid overdose.

Caryn: 06:06

Okay.

JJ: 06:06

It's important to have naloxone available at in the event that you come across someone who might be experiencing an overdose or be non responsive, our recommendation has been that naloxone be in the hands of many Dakota County residents as possible. And some people are afraid that they won't know how to use it or that they it's a medication so they're you know they don't want to have it on their hand. But Minnesota was wise and they created what was called Steve's Law. It's Minnesota's Good Samaritan Law that added naloxone legislation. It's named after Steve Rumler who passed away from an opioid overdose in 2011.

JJ: 06:47

And Good Samaritan laws are put in place to encourage bystanders to intervene in crisis interventions.

Caryn: 06:53

So that basically is saying that they they need to help. Right?

JJ: 06:56

We want people to help. We want people to be prepared and so we're doing these trainings all over the county and we're inviting everybody from your community to be a part of the trainings as well.

Caryn: 07:07

Yeah. And there's one coming up here at the Farmington Library actually.

JJ: 07:10

On February 12th, 6:30 at the library.

Caryn: 07:12

Okay. And then so what do people need to do? Do they need to register? Do they need to just show up? How does that work?

JJ: 07:18

They can register. We have a registration available on the library website. We have

Caryn: 07:23

And we we did put some up on our website as well.

JJ: 07:26

And you can go to the county website and register through the county website or you can just show up.

Caryn: 07:31

Okay.

JJ: 07:31

We're not gonna prohibit anybody from coming in. We want as many people to get trained as possible on how to use all of the materials that we provide because we'll be doing training on what we call nasal naloxone, the intramuscular naloxone, and fentanyl test strips.

Caryn: 07:49

Oh, what's that?

JJ: 07:50

Fentanyl test strips are gonna be used for drug users. They're gonna be able to test drugs to see if there's any Fentanyl in them. And I know that's a controversial issue, but if we're gonna combat this issue in all areas, we need to be engaging everybody in the community. You know our goal, we would love the idea that nobody's using drugs, but the reality is they're there and the statistics have shown it. If we can avoid and even the non fatal overdoses, because what is happening in the community is some of the drugs people are using are adulterated with Fentanyl and Carfentanil, which is even a more powerful version of Fentanyl.

JJ: 08:35

And I can, I don't want to make an assumption, but a lot of people are hearing about Fentanyl and Carfentanil on the news and what that does? But it's being infiltrated in all kinds of other medications or drugs that people get off the street or get online, however it is. And this medication automatically reverses those overdoses.

Caryn: 08:57

Okay. Wow. So what if somebody wants to attend, they can come? Do they get a free kit when they come? Or how does that work?

JJ: 09:04

Yes. They do. And we offer free naloxone throughout the county as well.

Caryn: 09:07

Oh, just anytime right now?

JJ: 09:09

Yes.

Caryn: 09:09

Okay. So they could go to the library right now and get some?

JJ: 09:12

We have, free naloxone at 5 of our Dakota County libraries, Burnhaven, Kaposia, Pleasant Hill, Wentworth, and Farmington.

Caryn: 09:20

Okay. So, yeah, they can come here. Who do you say, should have these kits?

JJ: 09:25

Everybody.

Caryn: 09:26

Everybody. Okay. Because some people are like, well I don't need that. I don't, you know, I don't know anybody that could potentially do that, right?

JJ: 09:34

Correct. That's what's the messaging is out there is that you don't know anybody but it is like we wore seatbelts when we didn't know anybody who got in an accident with a seat belt, but we wore seatbelts. Yeah. This is in case of emergency and with the statistics that we see, we want everybody to be prepared. We want everybody to have a kit and make it available.

JJ: 09:57

You can carry it in your glove compartment. You can carry naloxone nasal in your pocket.

Caryn: 10:02

Yeah.

JJ: 10:02

Just in case you come across something and that we never know. We attend events where something could happen.

Caryn: 10:09

Yeah.

JJ: 10:10

We just wanna be prepared.

Caryn: 10:12

And the best thing is to go to the training so they know what to do. Correct?

JJ: 10:15

Correct.

Caryn: 10:15

Okay. So what if they can't come to this training?

Caryn: 10:18

What are their other options?

JJ: 10:19

Well, Steve Rummler, Hope Network is who Public Health is, collaborating with to provide these trainings and provide the free naloxone. There are ways to get trained without having to come to our training. You can go online at steverummler.org

Caryn: 10:36

and

JJ: 10:36

you can get video trained. The kits also come with training. Inside you can there's a QR code. You can get training in Somali, Spanish, and English.

Caryn: 10:47

Oh perfect.

JJ: 10:48

And soon Hmong language as well. So you can you can pick up a kit and if you're savvy you can get training that comes right in the kit on your phone.

Caryn: 10:57

Oh, perfect. So that's easy too. You had mentioned to me, earlier there's like a survey as well. So what is the survey about and who should take it?

JJ: 11:05

So the opioid response advisory committee, the ORAC that I talked about a little bit earlier, that advisory committee appointed by the commissioners that meets every month, we're looking for input on how better to serve the communities in this opioid crisis. So we need the community's input. We're looking to get information, there's questions that ask you what what you think you would do or what you think is lacking or some ideas, because we might not have all the answers or the solutions. And so we wanna tailor the public health response from Dakota County to each community. And that's why I reached out to you because I wanna get to all of the areas in Dakota County and the rural areas.

JJ: 11:48

You know, Dakota is made up of the rural metro. Yep. And we wanna get to every corner of Dakota County and we wanna know what works in your community.

Caryn: 11:58

Okay. Well, James, is there anything else that we didn't talk about that we need to hit?

JJ: 12:03

Reach out to us. Be a part of it. Come and see one of our advisory committee meetings. Be a part of the solution.

Caryn: 12:10

Yep.

JJ: 12:10

Give us some ideas on what we can do.

Caryn: 12:13

For sure. And they can find that information again on Dakota County's website.

JJ: 12:16

That's absolutely correct.

Caryn: 12:17

Public health. Look for James Johnson. Not JJ because if they search JJ they wouldn't find you.

JJ: 12:22

That's true.

Caryn: 12:23

Right?

JJ: 12:24

But you could just, search naloxone and you can find us.

Caryn: 12:28

Oh, for sure. That's even easier. Right? But how do you spell it? That would be the hard part.

JJ: 12:33

Naloxone, n a l o x o n e.

Caryn: 12:36

Perfect. Okay. Well, thank you so much for educating us on this important topic. Before I wrap up today's episode, I do wanna remind everyone that the community naloxone training will be held at the Farmington Library on Wednesday, February 12th from 6:30 to 7:30 PM. Register for this event, either through the Dakota County's website or our website.

Caryn: 12:55

If you don't register, that's okay. You can still show up. Well, that concludes another episode of the Farmington Feed. Thank you for listening. We look forward to connecting with residents with this podcast.

Caryn: 13:03

If you have any feedback, guest requests, or ideas, email me at Communications@FarmingtonMN.gov . Don't forget to subscribe to the Farmington Feed wherever you like to get your podcasts.