Montgomery County’s Community Overdose Action Team (COAT) has been recognized by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), as a winner of the 2019 Model Practice Award.
The COAT, co- led by Public Health - Dayton & Montgomery County and Alcohol, Drug Addiction & Mental Health Services (ADAMHS), works collaboratively with community partners using the Incident Command System structure to help reduce the number of people dying from overdoses in Montgomery County.
NACCHO’s Model Practice Awards is an annual recognition of programs demonstrating exemplary and replicable qualities in response to a critical local public health need. This year, 53 outstanding local health department programs have received this recognition, addressing a broad range of public health issues, including immunization, infectious diseases, environmental health, and emergency preparedness.
“Montgomery County recognized early on that the best way to combat the rise of overdose deaths in our community was to work collectively across multiple agencies,” said Montgomery County Commissioner Judy Dodge. “The commitment, cooperation and collaboration among participating agencies is truly a model example of how communities can work together to address public health concerns.”
“We are proud to be recognized by our peers as providing a Public Health response to a crisis that is judged to be used as a model for other health departments,” said Jeff Cooper, Health Commissioner, Public Health - Dayton & Montgomery County.
“Our partnership with Public Health in establishing and managing the COAT not only addresses the short-term goal of reducing the number of overdose deaths, but establishes programs and interventions to address the overall problem of addiction.” said Helen Jones-Kelly, Executive Director, ADAMHS.
“The 2019 Model Practice Awards are a showcase of the best and brightest in local public health. Winners display a diverse range of topics including issues such as supporting incarcerated moms’ breastfeeding efforts, food safety protections, HIV Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PreP), door-to-door emergency medication dispensing, sustaining community-based immunizations, prevention of falls in older adults and many more issues,” said NACCHO’s Chief Executive Officer Lori Tremmel Freeman.
Winning projects, as determined through a competitive, peer-reviewed process, will be added to NACCHO’s Model Practice searchable online database. There, other local health departments can review these best practices and adopt them for use in their local community.
About NACCHO: The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) represents the nation’s nearly 3,000 local governmental health departments. These city, county, metropolitan, district, and tribal departments work every day to protect and promote health and well-being for all people in their communities. For more information about NACCHO, please visit www.naccho.org.
