🚑 Rapid response: POST teams follow up within 72 hours after an overdose reversal.
📊 Measured impact: 43% of contacted survivors entered treatment programs.
🤝 Community effort: Funded through opioid settlements, POST now includes peer specialists.
SHALIMAR — Okaloosa County’s Post Overdose Support Team has reached more than 200 overdose survivors in its first year, and local leaders say the program is saving both lives and futures while overdose deaths trend downward.
Fort Walton Beach Police Chief Robert Bage, who helped spearhead the initiative, said Tuesday the county acted after data showed Okaloosa ranking among Florida’s top seven counties for opioid overdose deaths in 2023.
“Our Medical Examiner District, which is the four western counties, was number one for overdose deaths per capita,” Bage told commissioners. “That means we had more per capita overdose deaths than Jacksonville, Tampa, Miami … we ranked greater than them per capita.”
Health Officer Beth Smith with the Florida Department of Health in Okaloosa shared outcomes showing 190 overdoses and 202 POST visits since the program’s launch. Out of 114 successful client contacts, 43% enrolled in some form of treatment: 27 in behavioral health programs, nine in faith-based programs, and 13 inmates in medication-assisted treatment at the jail.
“Forty-nine total people have received help,” Smith said. “It may not seem like we’re reaching thousands, but we are making a difference … it is through their commitment and dedication for ending overdoses that is truly saving lives.”
Quarterly data shows POST is maintaining momentum. Between April and June 2025, the team responded to 37 overdoses, made 53 outreach visits, and secured 25 new treatment enrollments — including 10 inmates in the jail’s medication-assisted treatment program.
Commissioner Carolyn Ketche, a former social worker, pressed Smith and Bage on why a conservative, family-oriented county faces such high drug use.
“How can we have so many drug overdoses in this community?” she asked.
Smith responded, “We’re not immune, regardless of what our community is, and it impacts people in all aspects of life.”
Bage added that long-standing drug culture, fallout from the prescription pill epidemic, and the arrival of fentanyl created a “perfect storm.”
“We solved a symptom, but not the problem,” he said of the crackdown on pill mills. “So everybody then went to illicit drugs … fentanyl then was mixed in the perfect storm, and then we saw that spike in overdose deaths.”
Commissioner Drew Palmer noted that while the program’s numbers may seem small, “every single one of them counts. And every single one of them has an effect on their family, their communities as well.”
Commission Chairman Paul Mixon linked the success to the county’s decision to accept opioid settlement funds.
“Hopefully [this] will mean this is just an integral part of our EMS, an integral part of different agencies working together … to show a lasting impact of care,” Mixon said.
Bage said POST has begun incorporating peer specialists into follow-up visits and community events, expanding its reach.
He invited the public to an International Overdose Awareness Day event at 6 p.m. Aug. 28 at Crosspoint Church.
“We’re not just saving lives, we’re also saving futures,” Bage said.
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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