Drug poisoning deaths in Chatham County have been steadily on the rise since 2015, with a dramatic increase between 2019 and 2020. Drug poisoning injuries and death have many factors but among children accidental ingestion of prescription medication remains a large concern. 

"Since the late 1970s, the percentage of all child poisoning deaths due to medications has nearly doubled (https://www.asthealth.org/medications-leading-cause-accidental-poisoning-deaths-children, 2021) "Among young children, 95 percent of medication-related poisoning visits to emergency departments are caused by a child ingesting medication while unsupervised and approximately five percent are due to dosing errors made by caregivers." (https://www.asthealth.org/medications-leading-cause-accidental-poisoning-deaths-children, 2021)

An understanding of the risks of unused medications being used innappropriately is on the rise, which has increased the interested of Chatham County community members in learning about and using medication lockboxes and disposal kits.

Chatham Health Alliance, Community Resource Hub, Insight Human Services, Chatham Drug Free, Vaya Health

Studies have shown that unintended overdose and poisoning due to prescription medications in children is due often to unsafe practices of medication storage. In a study by Webb et al. (2020), after brief medicatoin lockbox education and distribution ofa  free medicatoin lockbox, 90% of participants who had previously had unsafe practices of medication storage used the lockboxes to secure all of their prescription medications. Providing on the ground education and free lockboxes increases that amount of people rpacticing safe medicatoin storage.