> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.citizenjournal.us/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Reno County's overdose death reviews become a statewide teaching model - URL: https://www.citizenjournal.us/reno-countys-overdose-death-reviews-become-a-statewide-teaching-model/ - Published: 2026-09-04T13:59:34.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-08T16:53:31.000Z - Description: Twenty-nine Kansas professionals attended the Aug. 27 DCCCA webinar, part of a series on emerging opioid trends in the state. - Author: Rica Simpson - Tags: hutch, dnn, #news Sign up for our free newsletter and never miss a story. [Sign up free](https://subscribe.citizenjournal.us/?ref=citizenjournal.us) A statewide prevention agency turned to Reno County to show Kansas professionals how communities dissect overdose deaths for prevention lessons — a local process that has already spurred efforts to widen naloxone access in rural areas. Reno County Health Educator Thomas Simmons, who coordinates and facilitates the county's Overdose Fatality Review, presented "Every Life Tells a Story: The Anatomy of an Overdose Fatality Review" during a virtual training hosted by DCCCA on Thursday, Aug. 27\. DCCCA Prevention Program Coordinator Danielle Lynch reached out to Reno County after the organization's committee expressed interest in learning how the reviews work. An overdose fatality review, or OFR, brings people from different disciplines together to examine the circumstances surrounding overdose deaths, identify patterns or gaps in community systems and develop strategies to prevent future deaths. Reno County's review table includes representatives from public health, law enforcement, emergency services, mental health, medical care, treatment and other community services. Those same mental health and law enforcement systems meet locally in the county's mobile crisis team, which Citizen Journal reported in July 2026 stabilizes most local cases outside of jail. Simmons said combining those perspectives can reveal needs that are not apparent when organizations look only at the information inside their own systems. When a gap is identified, he told participants, the goal is not to determine which agency or individual is to blame; the group looks at the system as a whole and asks what may have been missing and what the community could build or change. Each review begins with the decedent's obituary, which Simmons said can supply information that does not appear in other records while reminding the team that the review concerns a person whose life affected family, friends and the community. After each Reno County review, recommendations can be assigned to smaller groups that determine what actions are possible and carry the ideas forward. Simmons said the effort to increase access to naloxone and other harm-reduction resources in rural areas grew out of those recommendations, as did a newly implemented process that gathers additional information from a decedent's family when family members choose to take part. Reno County issued a public health alert in May 2026 after a spike in methamphetamine overdoses, the kind of local trend the review is built to examine. Simmons told attendees that the work is personal to him: he is a person in long-term recovery and an overdose survivor, and he said those experiences help him understand both the fear surrounding an overdose and what families can experience when someone they care about dies. The reviews themselves stay closed — participants sign confidentiality agreements and details about the individuals whose deaths are reviewed are not made public — which is why Simmons built a fictional overdose case for the webinar rather than discuss an actual Reno County death. In a survey of Reno County OFR members, respondents reported that the reviews were helping identify overdose risk factors and system gaps and were improving collaboration outside the meetings, including communication among law enforcement, medical and mental health providers. Shortly after the statewide webinar ended, Simmons facilitated the county's regularly scheduled Overdose Fatality Review that afternoon. DCCCA's Kansas prevention program provides training and technical assistance to community coalitions across the state, with an emphasis on substance use and mental health prevention. It also provides overdose-prevention education, resources and naloxone to community partners. Details about the Reno Recovery Collaborative and the county's Overdose Dashboard are posted on the Reno County Health Department's Substance Misuse page. *This article was written using our proprietary AI system, Cronkite. The final decision to publish this article was made by a human. 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