The Moving Starke County Forward organization met recently to over what 2013 had to offer the residents of Starke County and what to focus on in 2014.
Nancy Dembowski said one interesting item that the organization will look at in 2014 is prescription drug abuse.
“Dr. Joan Duwve, the chief medical officer for the Indiana State Department of Health mentioned to us that she had seen statistics that indicated that Starke County is very high – in fact as I recall she may have said number one in the state as far as deaths from prescription drug abuse,” explained Dembowski.
Demobowski was quick to add that Starke County is a rather small county and those statistics are based on a 100,000 person population in a county.
Information will be relayed with the leadership team and find a way to tackle this epidemic in 2014.
Dembowski noted that they will be focusing on other items in 2014 as well to improve the health of everyone in Starke County.
“Smoking is another area that we may talk about and infant mortality of course is very, very noteworthy right now in the state. Those are some of the things we will discuss. We will have a follow-up meeting in January and the group will sort of decide priorities and which ways we think we can best serve Starke County.”
