Lexington is making a move in the right direction when it comes to overdose deaths.

More about that in today's medical news.

The city of Lexington announced there was a 32% decline in overdose deaths last year compared to the year before.

Overdose deaths went from 177 and 2023 to 120 last year.

Lexington Mayor Linda Gordon credits collaboration and a comprehensive approach to dealing with substance use disorder for the city's drop in deaths.

There are numbers were improving before the pandemic struck.

However, the isolation of those years really drove our rate back up.

And since then we've been fighting and working to get it back down.

This improvement came with a lot of hard work by a lot of people.

It's a testament to the collaborative effects of local programs, organizations, health care providers, and harm reduction initiatives.

This is a moment to acknowledge progress, but we know that our work is far from over.

Every single person struggling with substance use disorder deserves a chance at recovery, and every family affected by this crisis deserves our full support.

We remain committed to sustaining and expanding those, like those life saving efforts with the strategic use of opioid settlement funds.

We will continue to invest in harm reduction treatment access, recovery support and prevention programs to drive these numbers even lower.

It's wonderful to see us going in the right direction again.

Our harm reduction program started in 2015.

It's a syringe exchange, Narcan, testing a whole lot of different things that we do.

You can imagine not everybody approves and it can be quite controversial.

However, it's been proven to work time and time again over the last few decades.

And so what we can do at the health department is treat people with kindness.

We can look them in the eye.

We can smile.

We can say, welcome.

We're glad you're here.

And when they come through our door, we're able to build that trust.

And if we let the harm reduction process work and believe in it, it leads to all the right things.

According to the city, Lexington's fire department reversed 356 overdoses in 2024.