The opioid epidemic has hit Indiana hard and overdose fatalities across the state continue to rise.  Except, as Sarah Fentem with Side Effects Public Media reports, in one southern Indiana county.  Clark County saw a decrease in drug related deaths last year.

Clark County was hit hard by the opioid epidemic — in 2015, it had the third-highest prevalence of HIV in the state, which officials attributed to injection drug use.

But late last month, public health officials announced the number of drug-related deaths in the county has decreased by a third, from 90 deaths in 2016 to 60 deaths in 2017.

County public health officer and ER physician Eric Yazel says the next step is dissecting the raw data. He says increased naloxone use has helped drug overdoses become less deadly, but drug use itself could possibly be down, too:

“We tabulate our opiate related overdose visits as well, not just deaths, and our visits are down. That would hopefully indicate that our use is down in the county as well.”

Yazel credits buy-in from law enforcement and community leaders for effective harm reduction efforts in his county — including a syringe exchange program that began in early 2017.