Community members are invited to attend a lunch and learn centered around the opioid crisis.

Bluegrass.org Regional Prevention Specialist Shaye Walker said the community lunch and learn is part of Kentucky’s Opioid Response Effort (KORE), a state targeted response to the opioid crisis grant.

Opioid overdose continues to be a significant public health problem in the U.S., Walker said. It has contributed significantly to accidental deaths among those who use or misuse illicit and prescription drugs. U.S. overdose deaths reached 64,000 – or about 176 per day — in 2016, Walker said.

Walker said about 17 counties are participating and each county receives a community training, prescriber training and a first responder training.

The lunch and learn is the community training event for Clark County, and it is open to the anyone community who would like to come.

“I just think it’s really important to get together and talk about what’s going on,” Walker said. “There’s going to be a lot of data and statistics, and we will talk about what each person can do to address the situation at hand.”

At Lunch and Learn, community members will learn about the current status of the epidemic, what opioids are and the impact they have on the brain, strategies to prevent overdose on the community level and how to respond and review the resources in the community.”

The Winchester Chamber of Commerce will provide lunch. The event is also co-sponsored by the Clark County Agency for Substance Abuse Policy.

Lunch and Learn: Addressing the Opioid Crisis will be at BCTC on Thursday, April 5 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.