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Medicine Hat to work with other Alberta cities to fight opioid crisis

Mar 4, 2019 | 8:26 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Medicine Hat City Council has voted unanimously to support the City of Grande Prairie in obtaining grant funding for a new program that would allow eight municipalities in Alberta to work together to fight the opioid crisis.

The mayor of Grande Prairie wrote a letter to Mayor Ted Clugston to gain support to apply for an Alberta Community Partnership (ACP) grant for the development of an Alberta Intermunicipal Opioid Response.

The letter says there needs to be a formalized approach to communicating new knowledge on handling the opioid crisis between municipalities.

The grant funds will be used to co-ordinate information sharing between the cities of Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, Calgary, Airdrie, Red Deer, Grande Prairie, Leduc and the Municipality of Wood Buffalo.

“We would probably be contributing our experiences and what’s gone on here and what we’ve tried to do, what’s happened with our community,” says Mayor Ted Clugston. “I think a lot of the stories you’re hearing here are the exact same stories you’re hearing everywhere else.”

If the grant funding is approved by the province, it would allow the City of Grande Prairie to gather information over the next 15-18 months and hire a dedicated person to share information across Alberta communities.

It would also facilitate building connections between the communities to come up with a list of best practices to fight the opioid crisis.