All this work is moving forward if the board approves it.”

Dakota County Public Health Deputy Director Erin Carder

At the Tuesday, March 4 meeting of Dakota County’s Opioid Response Action Committee (ORAC), the group finished its three-month creation of a strategic plan and adopted the plan to be carried out over the next two years.
The group’s strategic plan consists of four goals:
1. Engage organizations and schools to promote adolescent opioid prevention
2. Distribute naloxone throughout Dakota County and educate [the] community on how it works to reduce overdoses
3. Create and expand adolescent and adult recovery services to improve community health
4. Create and promote culturally appropriate and stigma-reducing opioid messages to increase community awareness
These goals are the final products of the Top Facilitation Method, a three-month process to create a strategic plan that was overseen by Dakota County Communications Coordinator Matt Giljahn and Communities for a Lifetime Initiative Supervisor Jess Luce.
The process started at the group’s December meeting with members listing their top ideas of goals for the committee. Those ideas were then grouped together into overarching categories which were then shifted into goals. From those goals, concrete actions toward those goals were workshopped with inciting actions and potential roadblocks to them.
“It’s incredible how it fell into shape,” said ORAC Chair Dr. Seema Maddali.
At the March meeting, members took those actions and placed them out on a calendar, separating out the time- or resource-intensive actions like “starting a paid communication campaign,” and “create a substance use disorder and recovery services community guide.”
Standing around a table, ORAC members shifted goals and discussed which would dovetail into others, what required funding or hiring outside firms. Luce was pleased with the collaboration of members standing together around a table rather than having the calendar pinned up at the front of the room: “it kind of flattens the power structure.”
Much of the discussion when it came to ORAC’s goals has been to not reinvent the wheel, but to bring successful programs and resources to Dakota County. For example, one of the first projects of the group is to create a substance use disorder and recovery services guide. Much of this information is already online, especially on Dakota County’s own website.
“The real magic is in the delivery,” said Marcus Blue, a healthcare official on the board.
The group discussed other successful programs that parallel its own goals. One of ORAC’s goals is to create a near-expiration naloxone usage plan for community partners.
“We have expiring naloxone and they want it, but getting it to them is difficult,” said Opioid Prevention Program Coordinator James Johnson Jr.
A similar program that was brought up regarding this goal was the Community Resource Referral Centers (CRRC), a program from the Department of Veterans Affairs that provides “one-stop access to community-based, multiagency services to promote permanent housing, health and mental health care,” to homeless veterans and those at risk of homelessness, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs website.
Another program discussed was Ohio’s OD Surge Alert program which sends out texts to subscribers when there is a surge of overdoses. The program provides “timely information when conditions are occurring that make using drugs even more risky than usual,” said Casey Smith, Program Manager for the Community Overdose Action Team in Ohio.
With the finalization of the committee’s strategic plan, ORAC now runs into the limits of its ability as an advisory committee. ORAC is only able to provide recommendations to Dakota County’s Board of Commissioners. Until the board approves ORAC’s strategic plan, which is slated for the April 22 board meeting, the group cannot spend money or take actions outside of the in-house work at the county.
“All this work is moving forward if the board approves it,” said Dakota County Public Health Deputy Director Erin Carder.
Until then, however, board meetings may look more like they did before the strategic plan creation process with guest speakers presenting before the board, or members from the community, local healthcare professionals, law enforcement, city and county officials sharing updates on what is happening in Dakota County.
ORAC can get a jumpstart on its goals by utilizing county staff and resources like Dakota County’s own communications team to begin the process of setting up a communications campaign, but otherwise their hands are tied when it come to accessing funds and requesting proposals.