The Simcoe-Muskoka District Health unit has unveiled a new strategy to tackle the opioid crisis.

The strategy, unveiled on Wednesday, was more than a year in the making, with input from health care providers, addictions counsellors and police. It’s a multi-pronged approach to dealing with the opioid crisis.

It focuses on five action pillars: prevention, treatment, harm reduction, enforcement and emergency management. 

“We know our rates of opioid emergency room visits and deaths are well above the provincial average,” says Dr Lisa Simon, the Health Unit’s Associate Medical Officer of Health.

The prevention measures include awareness programs for at-risk groups and in schools.

“We need to ensure the [students] are being built up with the skills and resilience necessary to not choose that direction,” says Simon. “People living in poverty, who experience trauma, those are key risk factors later in life, so any work we do to address these social factors will benefit us.”

More access to addiction treatment is also a priority. The strategy also includes new regional rapid-access addictions medicine clinics in Barrie, Orillia and Midland, and an overdose prevention and supervised consumption site in Barrie, which is a pivotal piece of the harm reduction strategy.

The Canadian Mental Health Association and the Gilbert Centre are waiting for approval from the province for the safe injection site.

“Folks don’t know what’s in their drugs. We need to make sure those people stay alive and access other health services,” says The Gilbert Centres Harm Reduction Coordinator Matt Turner.

More naloxone will also be distributed to pharmacies, social services and emergency departments.

Police forces across Simcoe County and Muskoka are sharing more Intel on drug traffickers.

"to ensure we can better target the individuals responsible for manufacturing and trafficking the opioids," says OPP Detective Inspector Jim Walker.
 
A plan is also being developed to respond to an overdose outbreak.

Many of the actions outlined in the strategy will be in place by the end of this year.  Health officials say they expect to have the strategy fully implemented within three years.