The Brief
- Addressing the amount of rising opioid deaths among seniors citizens in the Tampa Bay area.
- Hillsborough County’s Health Care Services are looking to fund programs to address the opioid crisis.
- They are calling for applications to use $25 million from an opioid settlement awarded to Florida.
TAMPA – New data from the Florida Department of Health and FDLE shows seniors in the Tampa Bay region are dying at higher rates from opioid overdoses than young people, according to the nonprofit Live Tampa Bay.
“What is unique to our area is the persistence of people 65 and older dying. I think in the imagination of most people including myself before looking at the data I would think that an average person who suffers from substance abuse is maybe 20s, 30-year-olds,” said Jennifer Webb, CEO of Live Tampa Bay. “The top cohort that’s dying is the prime workforce age group, which is 35 to 54. But the second-largest group cohort are our seniors.”
Webb leads Live Tampa Bay, a nonprofit that focuses on addiction treatment and recovery resources. She said FDOH and FDLE recently released their data for 2023, and the data shows deaths are increasing over the last three years of data when it comes to seniors.
Florida passed a law in 2018 limiting the supply of opioids to three days, or a seven-day supply if certain conditions are met. …