Drug abuse – an issue that affects employers, educators and families throughout the 10-county Barren River region – is getting renewed attention from a group formed seven years ago to address community health issues.

About 50 members of the Barren River Initiative to Get Healthy Together Coalition worked Tuesday in new stakeholder groups and started the process of addressing multiple health issues and organizing a forum on drug abuse for this fall.

“Substance abuse is one area that cuts across all stakeholder groups,” BRIGHT Coalition Vice Chairman Jeff Moore said. “We’ve been having pockets of discussion about it. This (forum) will bring together all stakeholders.”

No date has been set for the forum, but coalition member Doris Thomas said plans are in the works to hold it in the fall and invite anyone interested in tackling the problem.

Thomas, vice president of development and community outreach for Med Center Health, said the need to address substance abuse grew out of experiences in the health care community.

“We were noticing an increase in drug overdoses and aggression to our emergency room staff,” Thomas said. “We realized it’s not just a hospital problem but a community problem. We hope to pull together people and make a difference.”

Bringing together health care, law enforcement, business and social service professionals to work on ways to battle substance abuse is an idea welcomed by Warren County Drug Task Force Director Tommy Loving.

“Obviously, the illegal use of drugs is already at the top of the community’s list of health issues,” Loving said. “We welcome any help from our counterparts who might have new ideas.”

Plenty of new ideas were tossed around at Tuesday’s meeting, in which BRIGHT Coalition members broke into the organization’s four new stakeholder groups that were formed to address the main issues identified in the county health rankings developed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The coalition will now be organized around the stakeholder groups of healthy lifestyle, health services, health equity and healthy environment, all designed to address needs found in the county health rankings.

It’s a departure from a structure that had the coalition organized around segments of the economy. The new structure is aimed at making it easier to measure the success of the group.

“I’m really excited about the change in the stakeholder groups … ,” said Lisa Goldy of Bowling Green, a member of the coalition for nearly four years. “We’ll be getting a variety of voices addressing these issues. It will actually bring together a true cross section of the community.”

Likewise, Moore believes the new structure has benefits, including making the coalition’s success measurable.

“We are focusing on outcomes,” Moore said. “This will allow us to focus on how we are improving the numbers.”

The county health rankings include such items as smoking rates, obesity and number of physicians per capita. To begin the process of addressing those issues and trying to make improvements, the coalition is rolling out a new survey that touches on many community health topics.

Dennis Chaney, director of the Barren River District Health Department, said the survey will be made available throughout the Barren River region from Sept. 1 to Oct. 31.

“We’re using the county health rankings to help develop some of the questions,” Chaney said. “We encourage folks in all our communities to take the survey. The results will equip us with the tools we need to address these issues.”

Coalition members will use the survey results to put together the organization’s third three-year community health plan, this one for the 2019-21 period.

“We’ll put together a plan and work over the next three years to address the issues we identify,” Thomas said.

She and other coalition members already know that substance abuse is high on the list of issues to be addressed. Thomas hopes the forum will help address issues such as worker productivity that arise out of drug abuse.

“Our whole purpose is to try to make our communities healthier,” she said. “This forum will certainly be a huge part of that. We’ll have it open to the public. We’ll try to educate people and then try to address the issues.”

– Follow business reporter Don Sergent on Twitter @BGDNbusiness or visit bgdailynews.com.