Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office seeks $200k budget increase due to overdose epidemic
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office is asking county council for additional funds to support a rising caseload driven by a spike in heroin and fentanyl deaths. Cuyahoga County Council members will vote Tuesday on whether to approve a $200,000 transfer from the general fund to the medical examiner's office, which has seen a 27 percent increase in cases in the first quarter of 2017 compared with the same period last year, according to the council's agenda. The money could be used to hire an additional pathologist. All but two of the office's current pathologists are on pace [...]
Northeast Ohio clergy devoting sermons to heroin epidemic
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- More than 550 religious leaders of many faiths will bring the problem of heroin to their Northeast Ohio congregations on Saturday and Sunday. They have all agreed to devote their sermons to raising awareness about the heroin epidemic gripping the area, with the goals of destigmatizing addiction, pointing congregation members to resources for help and giving them a simple step they can take immediately to fight prescription drug use close to home: They will encourage members to turn in any unused prescription medications as part of the National Drug Take Back sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice [...]
You Draw It: Just How Bad Is the Drug Overdose Epidemic?
By JOSH KATZ APRIL 14, 2017 How does the surge in drug overdoses compare with other causes of death in the U.S.? Draw your guesses on the charts below. Since 1990, the number of Americans who have died every year from car accidents... Click here to do the interactive chart and see how well you do... … has dipped, risen slowly but then declined, in part as a result of safer cars and improved road safety. Recessions and increasing gas prices can sometimes lead to a temporary drop in car accident fatalities, as seen in the late 2000s. Deaths are [...]
YMCA to add 80 beds for opiate addicts to its Y-Haven recovery housing program with Cleveland Foundation grant
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- In the past year, Dutch Pope, a 39-year-old recovering heroin addict, has watched opiate addiction claim the lives of three people he loved. Two of his friends and fellow residents at Y-Haven, a recovery housing program for homeless men with addiction at the Carl B. Stokes human services building on Woodland Avenue, died of overdoses. And in October, Pope's 19-year-old daughter, who herself had struggled with a heroin addiction, killed herself. "It was a pain I couldn't describe," Pope says of the loss of his daughter, Madeline. To Pope, it was a near miracle that he didn't [...]
Help us to End Our Epidemic
Since 1952, Rosary Hall has been at the forward edge of the fight against addiction. When our founder Sister Ignatia Gavin, CSA began this work, much of her focus was on the preeminently abused substance of the day: alcohol. But today, addiction has morphed into a more sophisticated foe. While alcohol, cocaine and other drugs continue to destroy lives, it’s the opioid and heroin epidemic that’s taking lives in record numbers from families, neighborhoods and communities. What talents are gone forever from the lives that have been lost as a result? This opiate epidemic is a community problem that requires [...]