Slides 2026 NC Child Mortality Taskforce
Tag: naloxone
In one decade, 170 babies, kids and teens died in NC after fentanyl encounters
Read the original article on the Raleigh News & Observer website.
One hundred and seventy babies, kids and teens in North Carolina died after fentanyl exposure between 2015 and 2024, new state data shows.
Infants, children younger than 5 and teenagers aged 13 to 17 were the most likely to die after fentanyl exposure here during the past decade, according to updated data from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The data, focused on fentanyl-positive deaths between 2015 and 2024, was presented by the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to a committee of the state Child Fatality Task Force last week.
Fentanyl is extremely dangerous because its residue is easy to ingest, and drug paraphernalia like needles or spoon often contains enough fentanyl to kill a small child. In one toddler death cited by the medical examiner’s office, a 1-year-old was exposed to fentanyl left on a cotton ball next to the bed where the mother and child slept.
“Illicit fentanyl really is one of the substances that is predominantly toxic to the pediatric population,” Sandra Bishop-Freeman, chief toxicologist and forensic laboratory director at the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, told the Charlotte Observer.
Among teenagers, accidental ingestion often comes via other drugs — even borrowing what a teen thinks is a Tylenol from a classmate could lead to an overdose from a laced pill. In a case cited by the medical examiner’s office, a 16-year-old who died of fentanyl overdose took what they thought was Xanax at a party.
More 17-year-olds died than any other group among minors between 2015 and 2024, with 52 lives lost. Infants less than 6 months old had the second-highest death toll, with the total reaching 24.
Among racial groups, American Indian and Black residents experienced the highest number of pediatric fentanyl-positive deaths in the state, the data says.
And loss of life overall in North Carolina is much higher than a decade ago — growing from 243 deaths in 2015 to 1,954 in 2024.
Despite pediatric dangers, deaths decline in recent years
There is some good news: Despite the number of fentanyl-related deaths remaining elevated compared to decades past, the rate has begun to slow over the past several years.
Fentanyl deaths among all age groups fell 26% statewide in October 2025 compared to the previous year, with deaths in Mecklenburg County down to 142 from 192.
Overdose deaths have been declining the past two years, CDC data released Wednesday shows. North Carolina’s fentanyl overdose rate among all age groups fell by more than 30% between August 2024 and 2025.
Increased access to preventatives, such as the overdose-reversing nasal spray naloxone, could be helping slow overdose death trends.
A multifaceted prevention strategy has likely helped contributed to the slowdown in overdose deaths in North Carolina, according to Kella Hatcher, executive director of the NC Child Fatality Task Force. Her group has been studying pediatric overdoses for several years.
“You have to keep working on a combination of efforts to make progress, and that’s the case with many [preventable] causes of death,” Hatcher said.
A 2025 Prevention Block Grant funded several primary prevention programs, including youth education efforts that served close to 9,000 during the year. Another program distributed more than 11,000 lock boxes and 15,000 medication disposal kits, according to Tuesday’s presentation.
Opioid settlement dollars are also funding prevention work in many North Carolina counties. The state is receiving $1.4 billion as part of national settlements with opioid companies, money aimed at bringing resources to communities harmed by the opioid epidemic.
The medical examiner’s office will continue to share data with state and county agencies focused on helping curb the preventable childhood deaths, toxicologist Bishop-Freeman said.
“Despite the trends possibly plateauing, these pediatric deaths are still too many,” Bishop-Freeman said.
Narcan to be available in Davidson County middle, high schools
Read the original article and watch the video on the MyFox8 website.
DAVIDSON COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — Naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, will soon be available at every middle school and high school in Davidson County.
The Board of Education unanimously voted yes for the policy on Monday. Davidson County School officials say the district will take about 30 days for training and implementation.
Naloxone will be available in all 17 middle schools and high schools in Davidson County. A Davidson County parent whose children graduated from the district and currently have four grandchildren in the schools said the measure could save lives.
“Our son … was murdered by fentanyl,” said Lorie Loomis, a Davidson County parent.
Loomis says they have been fighting for naloxone to be available in Davidson County Schools for over two years.
“It’s a victory for the parents in this county,” said Dana Loomis, Lorie Loomis’ husband.
For Dana and Lorie, this isn’t just about policy. It’s about protecting lives.
The naloxone will be provided by the Davidson Medical Ministries at no cost. According to Janise Hurely, the executive director, each school will get two boxes of naloxone.
“The county health assessment says one of the number one issues, and it has been this way for almost 20 years now, is substance use disorder,” Hurley said.
Dr. Greggory Slate, the superintendent of Davidson County Schools, says once implemented, naloxone could be found in schools’ medical kits.
Naloxone to be available in Davidson County Middle and Highschools
Toddlers revived with Narcan after fentanyl exposure; mother & boyfriend charged
Read the article and watch the video on the WRAL TV News website.
Raleigh police arrested mother Vinus Humphreys and her boyfriend Tyrone Bannerman on felony child abuse charges after her twin 22-month-old children were exposed to fentanyl inside their apartment.
Raleigh police arrested a mother and her boyfriend for child abuse after they said her twin toddlers were exposed to fentanyl inside their apartment.
Vinus Humphreys, 25, and Tyrone Bannerman, 28, are both facing two counts of felony child abuse. Raleigh police responded after 8 p.m. Monday to a home on Lake Hills Drive to a report of an unresponsive child.
EMS was already on scene providing medical aid to a 22-month-old child when, shortly after, the child’s twin also became unresponsive.
First responders administered Narcan to both children and took them to the hospital for further treatment. Their condition is considered stable and are expected to survive.
Narcan is is a medicine that can help people who are overdosing on an opioid.
Raleigh police found drugs, drug paraphernalia and a firearm inside the home, resulting in more charges for Bannerman, including:
- Trafficking opium/heroin
- Manufacturer of Schedule II controlled substance
- Misdemeanor possession of marijuana
The incident raised concerns for Barb Walsh, the executive director of the Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina. The number of children younger than the age of 5 dying from fentanyl is on the rise. According to the North Carolina Office of the Medical Examiner, 29 children younger than 5 year old died from fentanyl between 2017 and 2022, with 72% of those deaths occurring in 2021 and 2022.
“It breaks my heart,” Walsh said. “I hate to use the word overdosing with a two-year-old because they didn’t know what they were taking.”
Walsh lost her 24-year-old daughter in 2021 to an unintentional fentanyl exposure when a toxic amount of it was in a water bottle. It’s why she’s so involved in advocating for change so other families don’t have to experience this pain.
“We’re making progress,” Walsh said. “That’s all we can hope for.”
Earlier this year, Gov. Josh Stein signed a new law creating new criminal offenses for exposing a child to a controlled substance.
Walsh said it goes much further than the laws in place now.
“They get child abuse or child neglect,” Walsh said. “The new law will be a felony even if they ingest it and are OK. That will save someone else’s life.”
Walsh said the new law is a lot more specific compared to the broader charge of child abuse. However, Humphreys and Bannerman won’t be charged under the new law. While Stein signed it into law in July, it won’t become effective until Dec. 1, which is exactly four weeks after Humphreys’ twins were exposed to fentanyl.
“People who endanger a child with a harmful substance like fentanyl should be held accountable for their actions,” Walsh said. “It will lead to lives being saved. That’s the goal. We want lives saved.”
Humphreys and Bannerman are due in court for their first appearances Wednesday afternoon in Wake County. Authorities are holding both of them without bond.
From revival to recovery: Some paramedics are changing the front line of addiction care
Read the original article on the North Carolina Health News website.
By Rachel Crumpler
A life lost in Buncombe County in 2022 still weighs on — and motivates — Shuchin Shukla, a family physician who specializes in addiction medicine.
A community paramedic had responded to an overdose involving a person recently released from jail. After reviving them, the paramedic told the patient about a soon-to-launch program that would start people on a medication used to treat opioid addiction after an overdose.
“That would be amazing if you had it now, I would like to start now,” the patient said, according to a shift note of the encounter.
But the program was still 10 days from launch.
Soon after, the person used again, experienced a second overdose and went into cardiac arrest. They later died at the hospital.
“For the team working on this, the case hit home that every moment of every day matters for patients. At any minute, they’re at risk of dying or having an overdose,” Shukla said. “That’s how critical this is.”
For months, Shukla had been working with Buncombe County Emergency Medical Services to launch Buncombe Bridge to Care, a project to equip paramedics to administer buprenorphine — a medication proven to ease opioid withdrawal symptoms, reduce cravings and support long-term recovery for people with opioid use disorder — when responding to overdoses or others in the community struggling with addiction.
Continue reading “From revival to recovery: Some paramedics are changing the front line of addiction care”“Every life is worth saving”: How a UNC researcher’s website is connecting communities to naloxone
Read the original article and watch the video on the WRAL News website.
Delesha Carpenter’s personal tragedy has fueled her mission to combat opioid overdoses through increased naloxone access. Her new website with UNC maps naloxone availability across NC’s 100 counties.
Delesha Carpenter began her career as a researcher focused on pediatrics. A little over seven years ago, her path took an unexpected turn following the deaths of two close friends.
“A lot of people who get into this field, it’s personal,” Carpenter said. “I lost two friends within two weeks of each other to opioid overdoses. That really inspired me to increase access to naloxone.”
The researcher and professor with the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy recently launched NalxoneNearMe.org. The website features an interactive map of all 100 North Carolina counties, rating them based on the number of naloxone distribution services available.
Durham County is tied with Mecklenburg County as the highest rated counties on the map with a score of 88. Wake County wasn’t far behind with a score of 77.
Carpenter told WRAL the Naloxone Availability Scores are based on the level of availability of no-cost naloxone and pharmacies that sell naloxone in each county.
Naloxone distribution resources are categorized into 14 types, including syringe service programs, EMS, harm reduction organizations, health departments, pharmacies and healthcare providers.
“The highest score a county can receive is 100, which would mean that all 14 naloxone sources included in the Naloxone Availability Score are present in that county,” Carpenter explained. “If a county had one harm reduction program in the county, they would get the same amount of ‘credit’ toward the score as a county that had two or three reduction programs.”
Increased naloxone use and availability are among the efforts researchers say have contributed to a reduction in opioid overdose deaths in recent years.
WRAL investigated how the medication works when taking viewers inside the human body to reveal the way naloxone fights against opioid overdoses.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported more than 41,500 North Carolinians died from overdoses between 2000-2023.
As of the latest data available from 2024, overdose deaths decreased by approximately 32% from the year prior.
“One thing is everybody’s life is worth saving. It is important to carry naloxone, especially if you’re going to be in situations where people are going to be using drugs, you never know what is in the drugs that you’re using,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter said increasing the availability of medications for opioid use, such as buprenorphine and methadone, would also help reduce overdose fatalities.
“Other resources that people should be aware of, and one that’s linked on our website, is Naloxone Saves. Ours tells you what types of sources are available, but you can go to the Naloxone Saves website and find the actual pharmacies that carry and stock naloxone, or find your health department and whether it’s distributing naloxone,” Carpenter added.
Naloxone will not harm someone who hasn’t taken an opioid, so it is recommended even when it is unclear what kind of drug a person has taken.
More than one dose may be needed because some opioids, like fentanyl, can take a stronger hold on the opioid receptors.
After Years of Meetings, Davidson County’s $25 Million Opioid Settlement committee pushes to finally hire coordinator
Read the original article on DavidsonLocal.com.
The Davidson County Opioid Settlement Fund Committee is looking at hiring a coordinator to oversee how to use the $12 million the county will have in opioid settlement funds.
Currently Davidson County has been paid $6.9 million in opioid settlement funds and is slated to receive another $1.9 million in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
These settlement funds are part of the $56 billion North Carolina received from the national opioid settlement lawsuit in 2021. Davidson County is slated to receive $23.4 million over the next 13 years.
On Monday, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson announced North Carolina will receive $145 million in a settlement with Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sacker family. Davidson County is slated to receive an additional $2.3 million in funding from this recent settlement. Most of these funds will be distributed in the next three years according to the NC Department of Justice.
This would bring the Davidson County Opioid Settlement fund to approximately $12 million, which has mostly not been used. Last year, the county approved $1.2 million from opioid settlement funds toward the Medically Assisted Treatment program at the Davidson County Jail.
During the meeting on Tuesday, several committee members vented frustration on the lack of progress, stating they have met for several years and have yet to come up with a clear plan on how to spend these funds.
Lillian Koontz, director of the Davidson County Health Department, said she proposed the idea of hiring a coordinator for the opioid settlement funds over a year ago.
“These were the exact things we talked about and here we are a year later,” said Koontz. “We have not spent any money; we have not done any coordination… I strongly support using some of the opioid funds to identify a human being to do the research for us, to say how much money we have, to vet the programs and then bring solid ideas to us. As it is now, we just come into a meeting, hear some ideas and then we don’t meet again for several months and we are not doing anything.”
The committee members voted to send their recommendations to hire a coordinator/director to oversee the county opioid settlement funds to the county commissioners for approval during their meeting on June 23. If approved, the county manager would work with the county human resource director to create a job description and begin the hiring process.
Committee member Billy West, executive director of Daymark Recovery Services, said the committee should also consider granting smaller requests, under $10,000, to community partners until the new coordinator can be hired.
“It could be three or four months before that person actually gets (here),” said West. “In the meantime, there are other things that can be done so we are not viewed as a bunch of people sitting around with $12 million and won’t even spend $20,000 of it on local things.”
Mike Loomis, founder of Race Against Drugs, currently has a request for approximately $6,000 in funding from the Davidson County Opioid Settlement Committee and has not had any response from the group, or had his request sent to the county commissioners.
He is currently paying for educational materials, like several billboards to raise awareness of the impact of fentanyl overdoses, out of his own pocket. He purchases doses of Naloxone and distributes them in the community. Race Against Drugs also has an awareness event at Breeden Insurance Amphitheater in Lexington on Aug. 9.
Loomis said he is disappointed in the progress of the opioid committee, especially when it comes to supporting those in the community who are “boots on the ground” in battling opioid addiction.
“They are just waiting for another life to be lost,” said Loomis. “I have been doing this by myself for so long and I am up against the stigma of people struggling with addiction. I am disappointed, but I will keep doing what I do.”
County commissioner Steve Shell said the opioid committee can already bring any spending request for use of settlement funds for approval by the county commissioners.
The committee also discussed other options available to combat opioid addiction, including Naloxone (Narcan) vending machines, which would be available to citizens after hours. Several members showed hesitation on placing these machines in the community but voted to create a list of community partners which are already providing Naloxone.
The providers list would be available on the United Way 211 system. NC 211 is an information and referral service that connects people with local resources 24-hours a day.
Major Billy Louya, who oversees operations at the Davidson County Detention Center, gave an update on MAT program. He said since Jan. 1, there have been 27 participants in the program, which equals about 1% of inmates booked into the jail.
The MAT program uses once a month medication administered at the jail, instead of transporting inmates to local treatment clinics weekly and includes a peer support program after the inmate is released from detention.
The committee also discussed finding additional community partners to provide more post incarceration peer support.
The Davidson County Opioid Settlement Fund Committee meets quarterly and includes representatives from organizations impacted by opioid addiction, including the health department, law enforcement, family services, emergency services, county government, elected officials and community partners involved in prevention and recovery.
Why are synthetic opioids so dangerous? An ER doc explains
Read the original article on CNN.com.
The United States is facing an alarming increase in overdose deaths among young people due to synthetic opioids.
The rate of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids, which include fentanyl and fentanyl analogs, increased more than 20-fold between 2013 and 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Overdoses and drug poisonings are now the third leading cause of death in people under age 20, behind firearms and motor vehicle crashes.
The overdose death counts among US youth ages 15 to 24 rose from 4,652 to 6,723 between 2018 and 2022, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics. (A slight decrease occurred between 2021 and 2022.)
The largest increase was seen in deaths involving only synthetic opioids: Since 2020, fatal overdoses involving only these substances were higher than overdoses in which multiple substances were implicated. Overdose rates were nearly 2.5 times higher among male youths compared with female youths and more than two times higher among those ages 20 to 24 compared with those ages 15 to 19.
As a parent, I wanted to know more about synthetic opioids and their uses. Why are they so dangerous, and how are overdoses treated? How can people tell if the drugs they are taking contain synthetic opioids? Crucially, what can parents and other family members do to help reduce the risk of overdose?
The article continues on CNN.com or download the article PDF below.
“One pill took her daughter”: Fentanyl Crisis turns personal at Salisbury Roundtable
Congressman McDowell pledges to fight fentanyl crisis in North Carolina after losing his brother to an overdose.
SALISBURY, N.C. — The fentanyl crisis tearing through North Carolina isn’t just a public safety threat — it’s personal. At a high-level roundtable this week in Salisbury, that reality hit home as lawmakers, prosecutors, and grieving families joined forces to demand action.
Congressman Addison McDowell, who convened the meeting, opened with a message that carried more weight than politics.
“Getting it off our streets is just the first step,” McDowell said. “Prosecuting those who profit from fentanyl is a major step as well.”
For McDowell, the fight is more than a policy priority — it’s a personal mission. His younger brother died from a fentanyl overdose, a tragedy that inspired his run for Congress.
“We want to stop the deaths that come with this poison,” he told the room, surrounded by district attorneys, sheriffs, and special agents.
Among the voices calling for change was Barbara Walsh, founder of the Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina. She clutched a photo of her daughter, Sophia, as she told the story no parent should have to repeat.
“Sophia was 24. She went to visit friends in Watauga County. On her way out of town, she stopped for water,” Walsh said. “That bottle, unknown to her, had just eight nanograms of fentanyl. It was enough to kill her.”
Her story silenced the room — a chilling reminder that behind the data are names, faces, and futures cut short.
“It’s more than a number. Every photo is just one ripple in a massive pond of fentanyl deaths,” Walsh said.
Local sheriffs echoed her urgency, pointing to limited resources and the growing reach of drug trafficking networks.
“What I’ve seen in three years as sheriff — this is a local resource issue,” said Rowan County Sheriff Travis Allen.
Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers added, “We can’t fight this alone. We have to work with partners — every agency, every county.”
The roundtable, titled “Prosecuting the Poison,” ended with a commitment to tougher laws, better coordination, and faster action.
For leaders like McDowell and families like the Walsh’s’, that commitment can’t come soon enough.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, help is available. Contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.