Breaking Barriers: Plymouth County Outreach’s innovative Police-Public Health Collaboration to Tackle the Opioid Crisis

Saturday, October 19, 2024

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET

Location: 205A

Submitter and Speaker(s)

Vicky Butler

Executive Director
Plymouth County Outreach
Kingston, Massachusetts, United States

Speaker(s)

Marc Duphily

Chief of Police
Carver (MA) Police Department
Carver, Massachusetts, United States
Michael Skowyra

Detective Lieutenant
Kingston (MA) Police Department
Kingston, Massachusetts, United States
Sean Varano

Professor/Senior Research Associate
Roger Williams University/Kelley Research Associates

Plymouth County Outreach (PCO) is a collaboration of the 27 municipal and 1 university police departments in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, working with recovery coaches and community organizations to make treatment more accessible to individuals who use drugs. PCO started as a post-overdose program in 2016, but it has evolved to include distribution of harm reduction kits, engaging with individuals experiencing homelessness, and incarcerated individuals with a history of substance use disorder. By meeting people where they’re at, PCO has continued to build positive relationships and, in turn, reduce overdose fatalities by 24 percent since 2017. This panel will illustrate how to use real-time data to identify gaps within the community and provide a robust and county-wide response to the opioid crisis.