Tag: Dr. Michelle Taylor

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Naloxone, Fentanyl Test Strips Now Free from Health Department

Photo by Pharmacy Images on Unsplash

Kits to help prevent and stop opioid overdoses are free in Shelby County until supplies run out. 

The Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) is distributing the kits at select sites (see below) on a first-come, first-served basis. The kits contain two doses of nasal-spray naloxone (known as Narcan by its brand name), 10 fentanyl test strips, and instructions for each. 

SCHD Health Officer Dr. Michelle Taylor said the kits are being distributed “to save lives.”

“From 2018 to 2020, overdoses killed more people in Shelby County than automobile accidents,” Taylor said in a statement. 

The program is a partnership with the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH), which says naloxone is “a proven tool in the battle against drug abuse and overdose death.” 

“When too much of an opioid medication is taken, [the opioid] can slow breathing to a dangerously low rate,” reads the TDH web page on naloxone training. “When breathing slows too much, overdose death can occur. Naloxone can reverse this potentially fatal situation by allowing the person to breathe normally again.”

The state says naloxone is not “dangerous medicine.” But state law does require proper training to give the drug and be covered against civil lawsuits. In 2014, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a Good Samaritan Law that give civil immunity to those administering the drug to someone they “reasonably believe” to be overdosing on an opioid. 

To get the required training, the state offers an interactive online course here and a read-through version of the class here.  

After the review, trainees must pass an online quiz available here. Once complete, trainees can then add their name to a printable certificate found here. 

Regional Overdose Prevention Specialists (ROPS) offices are located throughout the state of Tennessee. They are the point of contact for most opioid overdose training and the distribution of naloxone. 

The state says more than 450,000 units of naloxone have been distributed through ROPS from October 2017 to March 2023. In that time, state officials have documented at least 60,000 lives saved with naloxone, a number that’s likely higher “because of stigma and other factors.” 

State Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) wanted to make naloxone even more widely available in this year’s legislative session. Her bill would have mandated that some bars (selling more than $500,000 worth of alcoholic beverages per year) keep naloxone on premises as a condition of keeping their liquor-by-the-drink license. 

The legislation was similar to New York City’s “Narcan Behind Every Bar” campaign. But Lamar’s bill was never fully reviewed and stalled in the committee system.  

Fentanyl test strips were illegal in Tennessee until last year. Possession of such strips were a Class A misdemeanor and distribution was a Class E felony. But lawmakers made them legal to fight opioid overdoses when Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill into law in March 2022.

To use the strips, small amounts of drugs are mixed with water. The strips are dipped into the solution for 15 seconds. Then, the strips produce colored bars to signal whether or not the sample contains fentanyl or if the test is inconclusive. 

In 2018, researchers found that some community groups across the country began to distribute fentanyl test strips. At the time, they found that most (81 percent) drug users who got the strips, used them. Some (43 percent) changed their drug-use behavior because of the strips and most (77 percent) said they were more aware of overdose safety by having the strips. 

Those kits with naloxone and the fentanyl test strips are available from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 

• SCHD headquarters

 814 Jefferson Avenue

• Cawthon Public Health Clinic

1000 Haynes, 38114

• Hickory Hill Public Health Clinic

6590 Kirby Center Cove, 38118

• Millington Public Health Clinic

8225 Highway 51 North, 38053

• Shelby Crossing Public Health Clinic

6170 Macon Road, 38133

• Southland Mall Public Health Clinic

1287 Southland Mall, 38116

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Shelby County Infant Mortality Rate Decreases; Still Higher Than Average

(Credit: Shelby County Health Department/Facebook)

The county’s infant mortality rate decreased by 28 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD), though officials could not precisely point to the cause of the drop. 

The infant mortality rate is the probability of a newborn dying before reaching the age of one, according to the World Health Organization. Shelby County has historically had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country.

State and county averages here are still higher than the national average. But the new figure is the lowest infant mortality rate in Shelby County since 2009, according to the 2022 Tennessee Child Fatality Annual Report. 

SCHD officials said a number of factors contribute to infant mortality such as “physical and mental health of families before, during, and between pregnancies, along with the health education, and resource systems that support those families.”

SCHD spokeswoman Joan Carr said state officials have not yet released statewide vital statics for 2020. So, the health department does not yet have enough information to determine all the factors that have contributed to Shelby County’s infant mortality decrease. 

“However, Shelby County Health Department has been making sustained efforts over the past 20-plus years to reduce Shelby County’s historically high infant mortality rates,” Carr said.

Dr. Michelle Taylor, SCHD director, said her department “provides a wide range of programs and resources that directly and indirectly impact infant mortality rates by providing families with support they need to give babies a healthy start in life.” Some of these include TennCare Presumptive Prenatal Program, Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program, and the Community Health Access and Navigation in Tennessee (CHANT) program. 

“While we celebrate the recent decrease in infant mortality, it’s important to note that [infant mortality rate] in Shelby County and Tennessee overall remains higher than the national average, and the significant racial disparity between Black infant deaths and white infant deaths have not improved since 2016,” said Taylor. “Black infants in Tennessee are still twice as likely to die before their first birthday than white infants.”

Tennessee’s infant mortality rate exceeds the national rate, which is 6.3 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the state’s child fatality report. However, this is the lowest reported rate for Tennessee over a 20-year period. 

In 2020, 495 children in Tennessee did not survive to their first birthday. Shelby County still had the highest infant mortality rate in the state that year with 89 deaths. 

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County Commission Approves Stepped-Up Mask Measures

The Shelby County Commission, meeting in committee on Wednesday, has moved to support stepped-up responses to meet the mounting menace of a Delta variant surge. 

After listening to testimony from Shelby County Health Department director Dr. Michelle Taylor indicating her intent to issue directives requiring a new 30-day universal mask mandate in Shelby County and reinstituting six-foot social distancing indoors, a Commission majority cast votes in favor of the directives.

The majority also approved a resolution, advanced on Tuesday by the body’s Black caucus and supported by the Memphis City Council, asking Governor Bill Lee to rescind his executive order allowing parental opt-outs to mask mandates authorized by governmental or school authorities. 

And the members present voted preliminary approval of a resolution by Commissioner Tami Sawyer to authorize $1.5  million to purchase 300,000 masks from the Henry Mask Company of Memphis.

Before taking the actions and hearing from Dr. Taylor, the Commission had also listened to a group of residents from Collierville criticizing the Governor’s executive order and seeking stronger responses to resist the wave of new infections, including school mask mandates and procedures allowing students isolation from non-mask wearers in schools.

The Collierville group was in contrast to a group from the same community which had protested against mask mandates at an earlier Commission meeting.

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Shelby County Commission Prepares for New Fiscal Year

WIllie Brooks (Photo: shelbycountytn.gov)

In what amounted to their last public meeting of the expiring fiscal year, the 13 members of the Shelby County Commission resolved several pending issues, more or less clearing the boards for the year to come.

The Commission overwhelmingly endorsed County Mayor Lee Harris’ nomination of Dr. Michelle Taylor to be the new director of the Shelby County Health Department. The vote was 13-0, unanimous, and it included even Republican Commissioner Mark Billingsley, who had questioned the appointment in committee last week and raised doubts about it in a widely circulated email.

Billingsley made a point of apologizing to Taylor before casting his vote on Monday, attributing his former concerns to a feeling that he had been “misled” by Harris. He did not elaborate further. Taylor’s persona and credentials had been extolled by several audience members before the vote, and a sizeable number of attendees were on hand to root for her approval. The mayor had made a spirited speech in her favor in the Commission lobby before the vote.

Early in the meeting, county health officer Dr. Bruce Randolph had offered the Commission some new statistics indicating part of the challenges facing Taylor. As Randolph noted, only 35 percent of Memphis residents are vaccinated, and the rate of new cases, almost all involving the Delta variant, has jumped sixfold in the last month.

The Commission followed its ringing endorsement of Taylor by choosing a new General Sessions judge to replace the retiring John Donald. Danielle Mitchell Sims was selected from a group including Carlos Bibbs, James Jones, Cedrick Wooten, and William Larsha Jr.

Later on, the Commissioners elected Willie Brooks Jr. as new chair of the Commission in fiscal 2021-22, with Michael Whaley to serve as vice chair. A tradition of sorts was dispensed with, as both the new leaders are Democrats. With some deviations over the years, the Commission had adhered to a formula of alternating the party affiliation of chairs, with the vice chair being a member of the other party from the chair.

The Commission now contains eight Democrats and five Republicans, and outgoing Republican Vice Chair Brandon Morrison’s chances were dimmed for either of next year’s positions when her fellow Republicans cold-shouldered her — payback for her win for vice chair last year with Democratic votes against fellow Republican Amber Mills.

An important bit of old business was cleared out, as the Commission roundly defeated by a vote of 8 to 2 the latest of several requests from the Shelby County Election Commission to purchase $4 million of new ballot-marking voting machines from the ESS Corporation. Election Commission Chair Brent Taylor and Election Administrator Linda Phillips were on hand to plead for the Commission’s support.

The Commission, though, has the responsibility for purchasing new voting machines, and a Commission majority has consistently voted its preference for paper-ballot devices, for reasons of both transparency and expenses. The two bodies have been at an impasse for at least a year on the matter — “Your power versus our power,” said County Commissioner Eddie Jones — and the Commission, by an 8 to 2 vote with one abstention, voted late in the meeting to put out its own RFP (request for proposal) for the paper-ballot devices it favors.

Two more pending issues of more recent vintage were dealt with on Monday. The Commission approved a procedure to process by the target date of September 15th bonuses that it had authorized for county employees in the most recent county budget — $5,000 for full-timers and $1,600 for temporaries. And the body approved a new ethics advisory panel for itself, to be constituted by members of the greater community.

The Commission’s newly formed Black Caucus held a brainstorming session in advance of the regular Commission meeting and emerged, under the guidance of caucus Chair Tami Sawyer, with a commitment to focus on economic and health issues. Caucus members also heard a report on environmental hazards in the city’s underserved neighborhoods and agreed to sponsor a blood drive for victims of sickle cell anemia.