The purpose of our team is to prevent overdose deaths in our community.
We established our Winnebago County Overdose Fatality Review (OFR) team in early 2018 when the Winnebago County Drug and Alcohol Coalition’s (now Breakwater) Data team wrote and was awarded an Overdose Fatality Review grant from the DOJ and Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS). We receive technical assistance from the Medical College of Wisconsin and Wisconsin DHS as part of this grant. Overdose deaths have been consistently growing since 2001. Our OFR team continues to look at the root causes of overdoses to see what system-level changes we can make to help save lives.
The purpose of our team is to prevent overdose deaths. Our team accomplishes this by examining individual, organizational, and system-level factors related to overdose deaths that occur in Winnebago County. The reviews focus on change to prevent future deaths and not on identifying faults in organizations or individuals connected to the death being reviewed.
We are the OFR Team, and we’re on a mission to save lives.
Meet our team’s Facilitator.
Meet Jennifer Skolaski, the Winnebago County’s OFR Facilitator. She has been involved with various nonprofits, including organizations focusing on the environment, education, health care, safety, youth, domestic violence, and poverty. She has led the Winnebago County OFR team since the beginning, facilitated other OFR teams, and served as a national technical assistance partner to get other OFR teams started. Jennifer is a compassionate communicator who brings passion and energy to building relationships with partners and making changes in our community so we can save lives.
Every month, our Overdose Fatality Review team reviews cases of people who lost their lives to an overdose. The process involves each partner sharing information about the decedent’s life and death, discussion of risk factors and circumstances surrounding each decedent, examination of system issues related to addiction and substance use, and identification of opportunities to influence policy and practice to prevent future overdoses and overdose deaths. Confidentiality is maintained through inter-agency memorandum of understanding (MOUs), signed agreements at each meeting, and de-identification of the decedent during the review meeting. The process is designed to maintain the highest respect for the decedent, those impacted by the death, the partner agencies in the room, and the broader community.
We’re here to make a difference in our community.
