Fayetteville to participate in national opioid abuse project

Jeremiah Lindemann was featured in an article in the Fayetteville Observer.

New America, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, hopes to lower the statistics with an interactive map that puts a face on the people who died of an overdose, Lindemann said.

Lindemann, who has worked for Esri for 16 years, said he got interested in the mapping project after his brother died of an opioid overdose about 10 years ago. The map, which is in its infancy, includes one entry from the Cape Fear region — a touching family tribute to Maxwell Lambert, a Clinton resident who died of an overdose in 2014.

By putting a face on the people who died, Lindemann said, he hopes the project will lead to better policy decisions and outcomes, including more resources and treatment programs. He said mapping the epidemic is his way of making people and communities more aware of the problems.

Fayetteville was chosen for the project because it has done its own mapping of opioid abuse in which first responders or police used the drug Nalaxone to reverse overdoses, Lindemann said.