The number of yearly opioid overdose deaths in Milwaukee County continues to decline. Compared to 2022, there’s been a 54% decrease in fatal opioid overdoses, according to the county’s latest update to its Overdose Dashboard.
At a press conference April 21, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said that sharing this progress comes with mixed feelings.
"That data also tells us that 387 Milwaukee County residents lost their lives to drug overdoses last year," said Crowley. "These are our neighbors. These are our loved ones, family members."
In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared deaths from prescription painkillers an epidemic. That’s when local governments nationwide filed lawsuits against the parties involved in manufacturing, distributing and promoting opioids.
Dr. Ben Weston is the county’s chief health policy advisor. Weston explained the severity of how the nationwide opioid crisis was felt in Milwaukee County.
"We had one person dying every 16 hours from overdose," said Weston. "Since then, there’s been a lot of work."
Weston added that 17 people died from an overdose in a single weekend in 2023, which he described as "unimaginable levels of opioid use in our community."
But 2023 was also the year that Milwaukee County learned it would receive $111 million over the next 18 years through opioid settlements. Weston said much of the county’s work has been preventative, like creating affordable housing, effective transportation and accessible mental health services.
Other efforts have addressed the crisis head-on, like installing free, no-questions-asked harm reduction vending machines, adding naloxone to emergency response vehicles and creating programs to prevent drug use among people who are incarcerated.
Weston said people exiting incarceration are susceptible to the highest risk period for overdose. As for the communities that face the highest risk of fatal overdoses, American Indian and Alaska Native residents are impacted the most.
Jeremy Triblett is the prevention integration manager at the Milwaukee Department of Health and Human Services. Triblett said the county’s FOCUS initiative, which stands for Featuring Our Community’s Untold Stories, is directly addressing Milwaukee’s Black, brown and Indigenous communities "to assess how they're accessing their substances, and culturally, how does that intersect with their cultural norms."
A community advisory board, comprised of people of color, is helping county officials facilitate discussions on harm reduction outreach.
