09-17-2023 GAR - Flipbook - Page 10
10 A Special Advertising Section of Baltimore Sun Media Group | Sunday, September 17, 2023
A Fresh Look at
the Opioid Crisis
Meet Emily Keller, Special Secretary
of Opioid Response
By Margit B. Weisgal, Contributing Writer
A
long with a new governor
managing our state, there’s a
new sheriff in town to help
Maryland combat the opioid
crisis. Meet Emily Keller.
After Wes Moore was elected governor
in 2022, he tapped Keller, then mayor of
Hagerstown and a volunteer on his transition team, to take a newly created cabinet-level position as special secretary of
opioid response. The job was to lead the
state’s efforts to counter the destructive
opioid overdose epidemic.
“This drug epidemic – and the related opioid overdose deaths – is extremely
personal to me,” Keller relates. “In 2015,
my best friend struggled with her opioid addiction. I saw the problems with
accessing treatment, with how she was
criminalized, and how she just couldn’t
Photo above: Adobe stock
escape the hold the drugs had on her. In
Washington County, where I live, there
are a limited number of beds, so there is
a waiting list to get treatment or to go
into a rehabilitation center.
“It’s the primary reason I got into
politics, to combat this crisis for which
I had a front-row seat. When she overdosed and died in 2016, in the middle
of my first campaign for a Hagerstown
City Council seat, I was devastated. It
motivated me even more when I ran for
mayor of Hagerstown, to be in a position to help halt this scourge that affects
us all – directly or indirectly. I want to
do whatever I am able to help those with
substance use disorder (SUD) have improved access to resources, to recover, to
have a better life.”
Six years ago, in 2017, the Opioid Operational Command Center was formed
to coordinate and fund state and local
efforts to combat the problem in Maryland. It is funded through the general
budget; then the OOCC uses grant funding to support opioid-related efforts at
the state and local level.
Two years into its mission, by 2019,
Maryland showed a decrease in “Unintentional Drug- and Alcohol-Related Deaths,” one of many statistics the
OOCC tracks. It was making a difference.
Then the pandemic hit. Nationwide,
requirements for physical distancing
made life far more difficult for those who
were trying to escape their addictions.
There were years-long disruptions with
treatments and even 12-step programs,
usually involving face-to-face meetings,
were forced to modify what assistance
they could render. And deaths increased.
A lot.
“In 2020, fatal overdoses increased
nearly 18% in Maryland,” cites Keller,
“far less than the 30% nationally, but
still not good. We now have accurate
data for the first nine months of 2022,
and those show deaths were reduced
by 15.4%, compared to 2021 and compared to the rest of the U.S. It’s because
we’ve got a comprehensive response
framework.”
The OOCC leads the process of updating the Inter-Agency Opioid Coordina-
tion Plan, a strategic plan incorporating
more than 20 state agencies in addition
to local partners dealing with mortality
due to substance abuse. It will be shared
as soon as it is available.
The same order that created the OOCC
created the multi-disciplinary Opioid
Intervention Teams (OITs) in each of
Maryland’s 24 local jurisdictions (23
counties plus Baltimore City) led by the
emergency manager and health officer in
each locale. Their roles are to develop a
community strategy and coordinate local
assistance from all the agencies involved
in combating this emergency.
“The Moore/Miller approach is to look
at this problem as a public health issue,”
Keller states. “We are bringing everyone
to the table: local health departments,
Maryland Departments of Health, Human Services, Labor, Public Safety and
Correctional Services, Education, Police,
and the Office of the Courts.”
On August 16, 2023, Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown announced in a press release that “the State
of Maryland received nearly $24 million
as the 2023 installments of payments due
under consent judgments that the Office
of the Attorney General entered into last
year with the three largest pharmaceutical distributors in the United States –
McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmeriOpioid crisis
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