PSDT focuses on survey, ad campaign

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

The Pub­lic Safety and Drug Abuse Team held a meet­ing at the County Cour­t­house on Dec. 6. Galion Police Chief Brian Sater­field, who serves as the chair of PSDT, updated the group on the Risk Behav­ior Sur­vey to be con­ducted at county schools for grades 7–12. Alto­gether, 12 schools in the county are par­tic­i­pat­ing, includ­ing pub­lic, sec­u­lar and Pio­neer CTC.

The parental con­sent let­ters for the roughly 3,500 stu­dents have been deliv­ered and sur­veys should be com­pleted by the end of the month. The sur­vey is spon­sored by PSDT and the Marion-Crawford ADAMH Board, as a means to gather data on drug trends. Jody Demo-Hodgins, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Craw­ford and Mar­ion County ADAMH, said they will have raw date in Jan­u­ary, but there would be no writ­ten report until the spring. The data does not com­pare indi­vid­ual schools, only Craw­ford County as a whole com­pared to national data.

Sater­filed was pleased to announce that there were zero drug-related EMS calls in Galion for the month of Novem­ber. Galion Health Depart­ment Com­mis­sioner Dr. Steve Novack added it was the first time this year that there were no calls.

Another announce­ment was that Craw­ford County cur­rently ranks 8th in Ohio for per capita over­dose deaths, an improve­ment com­pared to pre­vi­ous rank­ings. Novack asked, “Are we get­ting bet­ter or are other coun­ties get­ting worse?”

Also, Avita Health Sys­tems is doing a county-wide health assess­ment in the near future.

PSDT briefly dis­cussed Com­mu­nity Care March, held in Galion on Nov. 3. Sater­field said he was dis­ap­pointed by the low turnout. How­ever, the annual event will con­tinue; it is to be held in Crest­line in 2013.

One mem­ber asked if the date of the event should be changed to an ear­lier date. How­ever, Pas­tor Mike Cor­win wants the event to “stay con­sis­tent” and con­tinue being held on the first Sat­ur­day of Novem­ber. The ulti­mate ques­tion the group is faced with is: How do we get more peo­ple to show up?

They also talked about the Opi­ate Sum­mit, which was held on Nov. 15 at the County Fair­grounds. Among some of the feed­back she received, Demo-Hodgins noted that the idea of using recov­ered addicts to help in pre­ven­tion was inter­est­ing. Some atten­dees also said that treat­ment and pre­ven­tion groups have not been engag­ing the “cul­ture of drug users.”

The dis­cus­sion then focused on the re-socialization and tran­si­tion­ing process that recov­er­ing addicts must go through, as well as issues involv­ing pro­ba­tion. In rela­tion to the topic, an Ohio Risk Assess­ment Sur­vey is being con­ducted through the Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati regard­ing ref­or­ma­tion of prison sentencing.

The final item of busi­ness the group dis­cussed was the pos­si­bil­ity of a pub­lic ad cam­paign. Jim Cox from the Craw­ford Part­ner­ship for Edu­ca­tion and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment said Craw­ford: 20/20 Vision would most likely be able to buy a billboard(s), PSDT would sim­ply need to decide on the content.

One prob­lem mem­bers pointed out is that there is a lack of resources for help­ing peo­ple that suf­fer from addic­tion, so they would need to be cau­tious on what to put on the bill­board. How­ever, they expressed a desire in empow­er­ing com­mu­ni­ties through the publicity.

Pub­lic Safety and Drug Abuse Team’s next mee­ing is Jan. 24 at 3 p.m., at the Galion Pub­lic Library.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Dec 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.