The Barren River Area District Health Department is working on an “Opioid and Substance Abuse Response Plan” for each of the eight counties in its service area.

The health department will soon host community forums as an early step in the process of formulating these response plans, according to Ashli McCarty, the health department’s communications and marketing coordinator.

The forums will focus on local statistics related to drug use, she said.

“We basically just want to give the counties the opportunity to learn about harm reduction,” she said. “We are just trying to lower disease transmission and getting needles off the street.”

At this point, McCarty said, the locations, dates and times of these forums haven’t been determined, but there will be one in each of the counties the health department serves: Barren, Butler, Edmonson, Hart, Logan, Metcalfe, Simpson and Warren.

According to a news release from the health department, Kentucky has received $740,000 to distribute to health departments statewide to create an effective public health response to the opioid issues in the communities they serve.

The health department is using its portion of this funding, which amounts to roughly $21,000, to host the forums, McCarty said.

“The goal of these forums is to improve our community’s understanding of the importance of harm reduction, to reduce the social stigma surrounding substance use disorder, and to lay the foundation for the Opioid and Substance Abuse Response Plan that will help lower disease transmission, overdose rates and improperly disposed needles,” the release said.

McCarty said the forums will also focus on other kinds of drugs, particularly methamphetamine, because it appears to be more prominent than opioids locally.

“According to our data from our needle exchanges, that seems to be the drug of choice in those two counties,” she said, referring to Warren and Barren, where the health department currently operates needle exchanges.

The forums will include “educational presentations on harm reduction from public health professionals, with a focus on county-specific data highlighting the needs for our services,” the release said.

After the presentations, each forum will include open discussion with “community leaders, decision makers, and residents,” the release said.