Local agencies working ‘extremely hard’ to lower overdose death rate

More programming and additional funding is needed to get Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma’s worsening overdose problem under control, says the coordinator of the local drug strategy.

The office of the Chief Coroner released statistics last week showing the Algoma Public Health (APH) unit had the third-highest death rate in Ontario when it came to opioid-related overdoses during the second year of the pandemic.

Reached by telephone, Sault Ste. Marie and Area Drug Strategy coordinator Cami Coutu said its partner agencies are working diligently to try to bring the opioid crisis under control.

"All parties need to come together on this, all levels of government, in my opinion,” said Coutu. "Our feet are on the ground but I think we still need to communicate with the community what it is we are doing because sometimes I feel like they think we aren’t doing anything, but we are.”

“There are a lot of people who are dedicated and passionate who are working extremely hard at this,” she added.

Toxic drugs killed 59 people in Sault Ste. Marie and surrounding communities during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2021 to March 2022) — up from 51 the previous year.

During that 12-month span, APH experienced the third-highest rate of opioid-related deaths in the province, recording 52 per 100,000 people. The year before, the rate was 44.7 per 100,000 people.

Only Thunder Bay and Sudbury recorded higher death rates in the province in that time span.

Despite the higher number of overall deaths and the increasing death rate, Coutu holds out hope that new local initiatives will help bring those numbers back down.

Coutu also works as a Canadian Mental Health Association program supervisor and in that capacity oversees peer support workers — people with lived experience who work to help other people living with addiction.

Peer support workers are a relatively new concept to Sault Ste. Marie, said Coutu, but can now be found in a number of programs and services offered across the city, including the Harm Reduction Hub and Community Wellness Bus.

“They speak differently to the clients. It’s not clinical in nature and the clients are much more receptive, I find, especially those who have been hard done by the system. I find they are much more receptive to peers,” said Coutu.

With transitional housing and other services expected to come on board with the Sacred Heart facility and a new youth hub being constructed at the former Odd Fellows hall, Coutu said a great number of the recommendations from the drug strategy’s own 2019 call to action are actively being addressed.

“A lot of the things that we asked for are coming, it just takes a little bit of time,” she said.

One recent step backward was the pausing of Sault Area Hospital’s Concurrent Disorders lntensive Day Treatment Programming due to lack of provincial funding.

“Losing that funding was heartbreaking in the sense that so many people came out of that program in a positive way. I have hired some and they spoke so highly of that program" said Coutu. "Day treatment programs work in other cities, and it was proven to work here, too. Unfortunately it was a pilot project and there is no funding for it."

Coutu said more funding, more programs and more peer support workers are key to getting the opioid crisis under control.

Hilary Cutler, manager of Community Wellness at APH, told SooToday the opioid crisis is a complex issue that has neither a single cause nor a single solution.

She said northern Ontario has a number of contributing factors that make it more difficult to get a problem like the opioid crisis under control.

“Access to services is a big one, geography in rural communities is problematic for service delivery,” said Cutler. “The recent coroner data is showing the opioid crisis is worse in northern Ontario compared to the south, for sure.”

Cutler said an often used analogy in public health is ‘upstream versus downstream,’ with upstream representing issues like trauma, lack of support and coping skills which lead to a problem like addiction, and downstream representing possible solutions.

“We ask people to imagine they are standing beside a stream, the water is fast flowing and you see a person in the stream struggling to stay afloat. You pull that person out and save their life, and then you see another person and another,” said Cutler. “Then you wonder why are there so many people in this stream? How did they get here in the first place? So you begin to walk upstream ad the landscape changes and you begin to understand that it’s the context of peoples’ lives that shape their health outcomes.”

“The social determinants of health — those non-medical factors that influence health outcomes — we see that as being very specific in the north and contributing to peoples’ health outcomes, which we have been seeing throughout the opioid crisis,” she added. “When we view the opioid crisis through this lens, through human suffering rather than focusing on substances, we as a community experience more compassion, more empathy and this goes a long way toward stigma reduction.” 

Cutler said APH is currently connecting with people who have lived experience to better understand some of the local issues that people living with addiction face. The hope is that learning from those upstream factors which led to the addiction will help APH to build programming and education to combat the issue and prevent it in the future.

“That is so important and something that will help our community move forward,” said Cutler. “We really want to honour the voices of people who have had the courage to speak with us.”

The Sault Ste. Marie and Area Drug Strategy and its partners will be joining SOYA on Aug. 31 for International Overdose Awareness Day. The event will begin at 5 p.m. on Wednesday with speeches and dozens of names unveiled at the memorial wall at the Civic Centre before it continues at the Roberta Bondar Pavilion for a free barbeque and displays.