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Dear Leaders, 

We have titled this newsletter everything you need to know while on vacation and out of town. We hope this will keep you tied to our important work through the summer and give you a leg up on September. 

We have some good news from the Florida Medical Examiner’s Office. Last week it released a report for the first six months of 2023. Statewide the number of deaths, and deaths from opioids, are down. 

  • Drug-related deaths decreased by 7%.  
  • Opioid-caused deaths decreased by 10%.
  • Fentanyl-caused deaths decreased by 10%.

We will spend this month cleaning and assessing the data for the Tampa Bay region. Please join us virtually for our next Leadership (Tuesday, August 13 at 11:30 AM) and Stakeholder (Thursday, Sept. 17th at 11:30 AM) Coalition Meetings where we will present the regional findings from the Florida Medical Examiner’s Data.   

To further reduce the number of lives lost, our LTB team has joined together with Alan Davidson (Central Florida Behavioral Health) and OneBox to launch Live Tampa Bay’s Lifesaving Initiative to better engage our region’s employers and faith leaders.  These boxes not only provide Narcan, but also come with video trainings in English and Spanish. They will be appearing all over Tampa Bay as the summer progresses. 

July 25th at noon we will be joined virtually by national experts and estimable peers including Jillian Beloch, who oversaw a program that reduced the number of overdose deaths in her region by 20% in a single year. They and other guests will be hosted by Dr. Kathleen Moore, Research Professor at University of South Florida and Executive Director of the Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute. 

August 22nd we will host a Back-to-School Webinar Special, where we will be joined by some impressive national and statewide panelists on parenting, teens, substance use, and recovery.  

We kick off September, Recovery Month, with Brian Auld and the Tampa Bay Rays for Recovery Night with the Rays. September 3rd 5:30 PM please join us for a night of fellowship, inspired speakers, updates on the sector, and some close-to-playoff baseball. And at the end of the month Live Tampa Bay is privileged to be the sole non-profit partner working with Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to coproduce a panel on “Recovery Across Our Country”. This webinar will feature Hank Azaria and be hosted by Ariel ‘Air’ Britt, creator of the award-winning podcast, “Beauty in the Grit” and a political appointee to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.  

As you can see, even as we see some positive movement in reducing overdose deaths, we are pressing ahead, committed to continuing to reduce deaths in our region. 

We hope you will join us virtually while away and mark your calendars for September’s Recovery Month events. 

Yours in Service, 

Jennifer Webb

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