Consider the numbers.
Every five minutes of every hour, of every day, someone in America dies of a drug overdose.
Your son.
Your daughter.
Your spouse.
It could be the best man at your wedding, or that chatty person working the drive-through you exchanged pleasantries with, as you rolled up for your morning coffee on your commute to work.
Those numbers were offered up last week by Dr. Rahul Gupta, the former state health officer for West Virginia who now heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington, D.C.
The state were Gupta once lived and worked isn’t just in the heart of Appalachia. It’s also ground zero in the nation’s opioid and fentanyl epidemic.
It’s a place that saw 1,485 overdose deaths between March 2021 and March 2022, according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While there was a 3.6% decrease in such deaths during that same period the year before, the statistic still puts West Virginia near the top the country during the grim roll call, Joe Boczek said.
That’s why GameChanger was launched across the state in 2017 by Boczek, a Morgantown business and prevention advocate.
“Opioid and substance misuse and fentanyl are killing our youth, destroying our families and threatening the core of our West Virginia communities,” he said.
“We are bound and determined to stop this deadly crisis,” he said. “We believe the ‘One Pill Can Kill’ campaign will help us do just that.”
GameChanger is the drug abuse prevention and awareness network targeted to the state’s youth.
“One Pill Can Kill,” the campaign the organization unveiled this past Tuesday, fans out to parents, grandparents and other caregivers of an especially vulnerable population.
A key component is a promotional video featuring former WVU women’s basketball standout Meg Bulger that will be screened at middle schools and high schools across the Mountain State.
The campaign will also hit social media outlets. Plenty of supplemental materials, including a parent “tool kit,” is also part of the outreach, which has the blessing of David Roach, the state’s superintendent of schools.
“Everyone knows we are in a deadly crisis,” the education leader said.
“Anything we can do to educate our students and parents will help save lives.”
GameChanger also partners with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, a leading substance abuse rehabilitation program, and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
Right now, there are 12 GameChanger pilot schools across the state, including Clay-Battelle Middle/High School. The program wants to add 700 public and private schools in West Virginia over the next five years.
Info: https://gamechangerusa.org/.
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