LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 4, 2022) — The Lexington-Fayette County Well being Department’s Board of Well being has chosen University of Kentucky Professor Sharon Walsh, Ph.D., as a 2022 Dr. Rice C. Leach Community Well being Hero. The award is provided yearly to individuals who have demonstrated their determination to increasing the wellbeing of Lexington citizens. The winners are introduced each April as aspect of Countrywide Public Wellbeing Week (April 4-10, 2022).
Walsh is a professor of behavioral science, psychiatry, pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences in UK’s College of Drugs and College of Pharmacy and director of the Center on Drug and Alcoholic beverages Exploration. Walsh is the principal investigator on the landmark $87 million Healing Communities Examine, the biggest grant ever gained by British isles, to reduce opioid overdose deaths.
By means of her leadership of just about 100 HCS interdisciplinary crew customers (25 school, 70 personnel), HCS has established partnerships with 27 behavioral/healthcare and eight criminal justice organizations in Fayette County over the past yr to put into practice an integrated set of proof-centered procedures to battle the opioid epidemic. Fourteen new staff have been embedded in Fayette County organizations to extend capacity for treatment treatment for opioid use disorder (MOUD), connection and retain customers on MOUD, and have delivered overdose education and learning and dispersed much more than 4,600 naloxone models.
“I’m honored to obtain the award developed in memory of Rice C. Leach, a real general public health hero fully commited to strengthening the health and properly-currently being of Lexingtonians and all Kentuckians,” Walsh reported. “Kentucky was one of the first and is among the states toughest strike by the nation’s opioid disaster. Combating this epidemic have to take place in the communities the place impacted people today reside. The HEALing Communities Analyze workforce, in partnership with many state and local community partners, is employing proof-primarily based practices and getting rid of barriers to care and recovery to turn the tide on the effects of opioid use in the Commonwealth and develop into a countrywide design for reducing opioid overdose fatalities.”
Lexington Battalion Chief Marc Bramlage has also been recognized as a 2022 Dr. Rice C. Leach Public Well being Hero. Both equally winners will be identified at the April 11 Board of Well being assembly held at 5:45 p.m. at 650 Newtown Pike. They will also be honored by Mayor Linda Gorton at the April 14 Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council assembly.
Formerly regarded as the Public Health and fitness Hero Award, the Board of Overall health renamed the award in 2016 in memory of the late Dr. Rice C. Leach, Lexington’s former Commissioner of Health who spent additional than 50 a long time as a public wellbeing medical doctor. Leach died April 1, 2016.
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