Lincoln County proclaims International Overdose Awareness Day and details new tiered overdose response plan

The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners on Aug. 20 unanimously proclaimed Aug. 31, 2025, International Overdose Awareness Day and heard county public-health staff describe a newly finalized, tiered overdose response plan intended to detect and respond to local overdose trends.

The proclamation notes national and state overdose statistics cited by presenters and urges residents to learn how to recognize and respond to overdoses. Jesse Noble, regional overdose prevention coordinator for Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties, and Shelby Neiff, disease prevention and harm-reduction program manager for Lincoln County Public Health, briefed the board on the plan and distribution efforts.

The plan, staff said, combines multiple data sources — emergency-department and urgent-care ESSENCE syndromic surveillance, suspected medical-examiner reports and anecdotal reports from harm-reduction teams — and is reviewed weekly. Staff described a tiered alert system: lower-tier notices provide targeted guidance to direct-service providers, while higher tiers would trigger broader community messaging and regional coordination with Linn and Benton counties. County staff reported they have used the plan to issue a “yellow” alert once.

Neiff described an anonymous local reporting form that lets partners note whether naloxone was used, whether first responders were called and whether the person survived, while limiting identifying information to protect privacy in small communities. Staff also said the county’s dashboard maps incidents at the town level for communities of roughly 400 people or more, but that some fine-grained data cannot be publicly shared to avoid identifying individuals in very small populations.

On naloxone access, staff said the county’s harm-reduction team offers naloxone at multiple fixed outreach sites and via secondary distribution partners; they specifically named the Newport Public Library as a location offering both injectable and nasal naloxone. Staff also advised that administering naloxone is appropriate when an overdose is suspected, and that lack of response to naloxone gives useful information to first responders.

Commissioner Casey Miller moved the proclamation; Commissioner Claire Hall seconded, and the board approved the proclamation by voice vote.

The county’s plan is intended to be regional: staff said finalizing response plans in Linn and Benton counties will enable a coordinated regional plan to synthesize trends across the three counties and better target prevention and post‑event supports.

The board’s action was limited to the proclamation; no ordinance or regulatory change was proposed. Staff indicated the response plan is in active use, that weekly data review will continue, and that further activation of higher-tier responses would be triggered only if data show larger or contaminated overdose events.