photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Chrissy Mayer, DCCCA's chief community-based services officer, speaks during the Wednesday, April 26, 2023 Douglas County Commission meeting.

Douglas County leaders were expecting to hear from a nonprofit on Wednesday about a fleshed-out, multi-phase plan for distributing more of a lifesaving overdose reversal drug — and possibly to vote on whether to provide funding for it.

Instead, they had to press pause. What they got from social safety net agency DCCCA was more of a list of “possible solutions” than a full-fledged plan, and the agency’s representatives weren’t even sure how much money they should be asking the county for right now.

As the Journal-World reported, the commission was scheduled to vote on whether to provide as much as $47,750 to support a plan by DCCCA to get more doses of naloxone — also commonly referred to by its brand name, Narcan — into the hands of folks in Lawrence and Douglas County. Before the meeting, the nonprofit sent a letter to the County Commission, which was included in the agenda materials and appeared to outline a four-phase plan for distributing the drug.

The first two phases in the letter were to install “ONEbox” units outfitted with an opioid reversal kit and an instructional video for how to administer them and vending machines capable of housing dozens of doses of the drug in locations throughout the county. Phases three and four called for expanded distribution to targeted demographics and a bulk purchase of naloxone kits — potentially 1,500 to 2,000 of them — for increased private access.

But at the commission’s meeting Wednesday, Chrissy Mayer, DCCCA’s chief community-based services officer, said it would be better to think of those actions not as “phases” of a plan, but rather as a list of options. Mayer and DCCCA CEO Lori Alvarado also voiced uncertainty about how much funding they would need right now, despite the specific dollar figure of $47,750 that was listed on the meeting agenda as the agency’s request.

“… It’s proposed as phases, but I don’t want you to think of these as phases,” Mayer told the commission. “These are all just possible solutions.”

Because of the uncertainty of DCCCA’s plans, commissioners said they wanted to hold off for now and see the agency return at a future meeting with a more concrete proposal. Douglas County Administrator Sarah Plinsky said a new proposal could be added to a meeting agenda sometime in the next two weeks, depending on how long it takes DCCCA to determine how much funding it’ll need to get started.

County Commissioner Karen Willey cautioned that the agency should focus more on the specific things it wants to accomplish, and less on a dollar amount.

“It seems like that (need for) 2,000 kits should be what’s driving the plan as opposed to ‘Here’s a random dollar figure, what can you do to spend that money?'” Willey said. “I’m not really comfortable yet without having a plan to vote on.”

Though all three commissioners wanted a more fleshed-out plan, they still voiced interest in what the agency had presented so far. Mayer said that the agency was on pace to distribute more than 2,000 kits in Douglas County this year, hundreds more than she anticipated. And commissioners also learned that if the plan does proceed and DCCCA purchases vending machines stocking the drug, Lawrence will be the first community in Kansas to have them.

The DCCCA representatives also said that the reason they wanted to meet with the county right now, even without a complete plan, was the urgency of the situation. They said that the county’s need for naloxone was greater than anticipated this year and is only growing by the week.

“I would like to tell you that the environment around opioid overdose has changed since we last talked (in January), but in fact if you continue to follow the news you continue to see that we still have quite a hotspot here in Douglas County,” Alvarado told the commission.

Commissioner Shannon Reid said she saw the importance of moving the discussion forward and tackling the issue of overdoses from a variety of angles.

“I’m really excited about this and the variety of options,” Reid said. “I’m kind of a big believer that you need a diversity of tactics, especially when there’s so many moving parts to it right now, the need has increased exponentially, your projected numbers are getting blown out of the water a little bit. Having a variety of options and access points seems really important.”