Lackawanna County gets $900K grant to combat opioid crisis

Oct. 31--SCRANTON -- The Lackawanna County district attorney's office will study every opioid overdose death in the county so those tasked with putting the brakes on the crisis can better know what is and isn't working.

The three-year effort will be funded by a $900,000 federal grant the district attorney's office secured in recent weeks, District Attorney Mark Powell, U.S. Attorney David Freed and county President Judge Michael J. Barrasse announced at a joint news conference Wednesday.

Powell said there are many theories about why so many opioid overdose deaths happen in Lackawanna County, but they are just theories. They lack hard evidence and data.

"We can focus on trends, blame a bad batch of fentanyl, blame doctors for overprescribing, but the truth is we really do not know the cause of the opioid deaths and there have not been studies in Lackawanna County that determine what problems are here locally," Powell said.

Some key data points the office will analyze to answer those questions will include the deceased's past treatment and stays in rehabilitation facilities, any mental health issues and "regular, good old law enforcement" -- where they got drugs and how often they used, Powell said.

With the assistance of the University of Pittsburgh's Program Evaluation and Research Unit, the office hopes to fills gaps in programs and services and direct taxpayer resources to areas where it will do the most good.

It will fund four new staff positions in the district attorney's office, which Powell envisions will include a detective, a part-time assistant district attorney and people who specialize in statistics.

The new project will have three goals:

Establish a multi-agency team to review overdose death cases with the aim of preventing future deaths. Reports recommending policies, programs and laws will be published each year of the grant period.

Establish a comprehensive database that identifies at-risk populations by January. This should allow for the creation of targeted programs that can reduce overdose deaths within those populations.

Establish a robust data collection, analysis and reporting system that continuously improves the project's ability to meet its goals and draft a final evaluation by July 2022.

"This is really looking at upstream not downstream," Barrasse said. "How did the water get polluted?"

There were 85 deaths in Lackawanna County in 2018, because of heroin, fentanyl or prescription opioids, according to data from OverdoseFreePA.

Between 2006 and 2012, the early days of the nation's opioid epidemic, more than 79 million prescription pain pills flooded Lackawanna County as overdose deaths in that period nearly doubled, according to federal data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We will be able to compile and analyze data to determine how and why people are dying," Powell said. "This will enable us to know what's working and what's not working."

The Office of Justice Programs' Bureau of Justice Assistance funded the Department of Justice grant, Freed said.

Contact the writer: jkohut@timesshamrock.com, 570-348-9144; @jkohutTT on Twitter

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