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* Press release from earlier this week…
Building on the state’s commitment to address the opioid crisis, Governor Pritzker today signed Executive Order 2020-02 to better address racial disparities in responding to the opioid crisis by establishing the Governor’s Opioid Overdose Prevention and Recovery Steering Committee. Illinois is also dedicating $4.1 million state dollars to expand recovery and prevention services for individuals with opioid use disorder in all corners of the state.
This year, Illinois saw the first decrease in five years in opioid overdose deaths. Despite this decrease, opioid overdose deaths among white residents in Illinois decreased 7% in 2018 while deaths among African Americans increased 9.1% and deaths among Latinos increased by 4.3%.
“This executive order begins an effort to achieve social equity as we work to end the opioid crisis in Illinois,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “We will coordinate innovative, evidence-based approaches in partnership with harm-reduction organizations, establish local systems of care in disproportionately impacted communities, and create a comprehensive statewide opioid plan. I’m equally proud to announce that my administration is increasing our state investment in this fight by over $4 million in this fiscal year. Illinois has made great strides in responding to the opioid crisis that has swept the nation,but our work won’t be done until all our residents have the opportunity to live their most fulfilling lives.”
The Governor’s Office in conjunction with the state’s Opioid Crisis Response Advisory Council will create an Opioid Social Equity Committee to make policy recommendations regarding how to address social and racial disparities in the opioid crisis response. They will also establish local recovery-oriented systems of care councils in communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the crisis in order to reach out to and engage individuals in all stages of recovery.
The Executive Order also focuses on harm reduction strategies that promote safer use of opioids to save lives. These strategies will help reduce both the risks of infectious HIV, HCV and Hepatitis A and fatal overdoses. This includes supervised consumption sites, where individuals with opioid use disorder are under the supervision of trained staff with the goal of ensuring the safety of both the individual and the general public.
* Chicago Urban League President & CEO Karen Freeman-Wilson…
The Chicago Urban League is heartened by Governor Pritzker’s Executive Order 2020-02, which will provide $4.1 million in opioid prevention and treatment monies to address the racial disparities in Illinois’ overdose death rates.
In 2017, our Research & Policy Center released “Whitewashed,” a report that detailed the high rates of overdose among African Americans around the country and especially here in Chicago. According to a separate recent study, African Americans are 33 times less likely than whites to be prescribed buprenorphine, a kind of medication-assisted treatment that is used to treat opioid-use disorders and also protects against overdose.
The monies will also provide stipends for doctors to become trained in prescribing buprenorphine and to distribute 50,000 kits of naloxone, the overdose reversal medication, in areas that have extremely high overdose rates. This is much needed funding to address the disproportionate rate of opioid deaths that is devastating African-American communities.
While overdose deaths in Illinois have decreased for the first time in years, in 2018 deaths among African Americans increased by nearly 10% and deaths among Latinos increased by 4.3%. Opioid overdose deaths among white residents in Illinois decreased by 7%. Having the state acknowledge these disparities and create solutions to this public health crisis is a welcome step in a new direction.
Individuals who are dependent on opioids experience trauma at every turn. They are often rejected by their support systems, face countless barriers to accessing healthcare, and often have fewer opportunities to opportunity and employment due to permanent punishments caused by archaic criminal justice practices. Frequent setbacks and personal loss only add to the challenge of achieving recovery and building a rewarding and stable life.
The investments in recovery and prevention services announced along with the Executive Order build upon evidence-based models in Chicago and throughout the state. Distribution of naloxone in areas hard hit by opioid use and overdose will save countless lives. The state’s treatment systems will improvement significantly by prioritizing MAT services in all settings. Heartland Alliance has seen the success of these initiatives are we are thrilled that the state is dedicating some of its scarce resources to these proven models.
Our health and behavioral health safety net systems have a critical responsibility to unravel this knot. Governor Pritzker’s executive order lays the appropriate groundwork, and allows all of us to refocus our efforts on addressing racial inequities and utilizing culturally-sensitive support strategies that work.
posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Jan 29, 20 @ 9:21 am
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“to address the racial disparities in Illinois’ overdose death rates”
At some point you do have to wonder if dividing everyone and everything by race (or gender) is helping or hurting things. To me the pendulum has shifted too far.
Comment by R A T Wednesday, Jan 29, 20 @ 1:37 pm
Simple statistics should tell you that there’s something odd going on here when the claim is made that the opioid epidemic has been “whitewashed,” or that the responses to it have been rife with racial inequities. If the state’s overall number of overdose have decreased while black and Hispanic overdoses have increased (by a percentage), doesn’t that mean that many more white people were overdosing than black or Hispanic people? Shouldn’t that also tell us that the increase in black and Hispanic overdoses is relatively small, since the overall number decreased? If anything, the “inequity” seems to have been that whites were more affected by the opioid epidemic than others. Wouldn’t it make sense, then, that an overall decrease in opioid deaths would have to mean a larger decrease among whites?
Before declaring evidence of some sort of unequal treatment, we’d also need to know the rate of increase in overdose deaths among different groups in previous years. It might be the case that all of these numbers, for whites, blacks, and Hispanics, are anomalies.
On the other hand, the numbers might indicate that “epidemic” in majority white communities is different than in majority black or Hispanic communities. People in rural communities might be using different drugs than people in urban communities. Or, it may be the case that the increase in black and Hispanic overdoses is concentrated in one particular area, and that we can trace that increase to a particular drug’s presence (fentanyl). This EO does address this by providing naloxone where it’s needed, but it does so obliquely because its lens is “social equity.”
Comment by CM Wednesday, Jan 29, 20 @ 3:37 pm