How the Henrico Addiction Task Force is working to address fatal overdoses

Henrico County experienced 78 fatal overdoses from illicit drugs in 2022 – more than double the number of motor vehicle deaths and also double the number of homicides.

To combat the issues related to drug abuse and overdoses, Henrico County officials in 2016 created the Addiction Task Force, a group focused on proactively lowering fatal overdoses. The force was developed to gather information from police and mental health professionals about the effects of opioid usage in the county.

Henrico Deputy County Manager Michael Feinmel, a member of the task force, said the team met again in 2020 to reflect upon the information from the community and used that to complete a report to set in place a plan for addiction recovery.

“And then, of course, the pandemic hit a month later,” Feinmel said. “The task force managed its efforts in combination with the pressures on local government from the pandemic and not being able to get people together. So a lot of the goals were difficult to complete because life had changed.”

With COVID-19 becoming a more normalized part of everyday life, Feinmel hopes the force can come back in full force with the plans it created. One key aspect that has changed in the three years since the force last met is the allocation of new state funding from lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors.

“We are getting money that’s being set to use for the purpose of remediating the problems that were created by the opioid crisis,” Feinmel said. “We’re using the money the right way, we’re using it to accomplish goals and get more input from the community at large.”

The estimated opioid settlement fund for March 2023 for Henrico County could be more than  million dollars from the Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority.

This funding may be used to support programming for pregnant and parenting women who have substance use disorder, said Leslie Stephen, another member of the task force and manager of substance use disorder services for the county.

“That really addresses housing and transportation and childcare and medical issues, as well as the substance-use issues for both the mom and then any of those issues that the kids might have,” Stephen said.

Now, the focus of the task force is seeking more community input. Feinmel wants participation from Henrico citizens to coincide with the task force’s work with treatment providers to supply them with the necessities they need for beneficial treatment.

“You would traditionally think we want those types of folks involved, and we do deal with those people,” Feinmel said. “But we want to cast out a wider net and bring in folks and get different perspectives.”

Feinmel has a list of more than 5,000 community partners who are willing to work together to start implementing solutions to fatal overdoses.

“We at least want to have involvement and have conversations with anyone who has been affected or has had their lives affected by substance use,” Feinmel said.

The task force also is planning to research and collect data from the county’s senior population to better understand the drug-addiction struggles of that age group, Feinmel said.

Another of the projects is building curriculums that focus on the lived experiences of those in recovery for middle and high schools, said Stephen.

“They’ll talk about their experience with substance, why it’s not good to go down that road,” Stephen said.

The task force also is working to provide training on administering naloxone, a nasal medication that can reverse an overdose. In the past quarter, the force has trained more than 300 people in how to properly administer naloxone, Stephen said. It also provides free naloxone to those who are trained.

“We go around to libraries and churches and community groups and all over providing these trainings so that more and more people can have naloxone in their hand,” Stephen said.