We are an active club! Read more about some of our recent events and service projects. 
Speaker: Water in Tanzania & Avita DuoAt our first Rotary meeting of 2024, we had an evening of inspiration, education, and artistic excellence as we heard from Rotarian Glen Rippke about the highly impactful and established Tanzania water project, enjoyed a meal prepared by Rotarian John Schultz, and then completed the evening with a stunning concert with the Avita Duo consisting of Steinway Artist, professor Ksenia Nosikova and Juilliard trained violinist Katya Moeller.
Service Project: CPR at CornellWe had an excellent Community CPR class at Cornell College on Sat, Jan 27, with 25 students who learned the latest in CPR techniques and technology. Seven staff and volunteers from the Lisbon - Mt Vernon Ambulance Service served as trainers, Cornell gave the training room, and Hills Bank provided refreshments for all.
One piece of new technology the students learned is a phone attachment that, when laid on a victims chest, can help someone applying CPR to track the rate and depth of chest compressions.
Another thing students learned is that in some larger cities with excellent EMS services, 66% of heart attack victims survive.
However in rural Iowa, that survival rate can be as low as 1% due to distances from EMS experts. That’s why community CPR skills by bystanders are so important in Iowa, to help a victim survive until medical experts arrive. Lead trainer Jake Lindauer of LMVAS told the students, “You’re part of the solution to higher survival rates, and thank you for taking this training today.”
Speaker: ASAC Info & Narcan TrainingIn the past decade, the opioid crisis has tightened its grip on communities across the United States. More than 80,000 people have died of overdoses involving opioids in 2022, almost quadruple the total in 2010. Most experts place the start of the crisis in the 1990s, when millions of patients began receiving prescriptions for powerful painkillers like OxyContin. Around the mid-2010s, a synthetic opioid, illicit fentanyl, started to spread. Fentanyl is easier to produce than heroin and up to 50 times as potent, making it much easier for people to accidentally take too much. As overdoses skyrocket, naloxone is becoming a critical tool to help stop these deaths.
At our last club meeting in January, Amy Doerrfeld, Prevention Specialist at ASAC (Area Substance Abuse Council) trained us on Narcan use. Narcan (or naloxone) is a medication that treats narcotic overdoses in emergency situations.
As for obtaining in our local community, for workplaces download this form. If you'd like training for staff, you can reach out to Amy (adoerrfeld@asac.us) and she’d be happy to provide you with training. As of individuals, there are multiple options:
- ASAC works closely with CR Care Pharmacy to offer vouchers, like Amy brought to the training. If you would like a voucher, you can reach out to Amy.
- There are a number of other pharmacies that participate in the state program to offer free naloxone: Find Naloxone | Naloxone Iowa. This link has an interactive map of locations in Iowa that participate. However, they encourage people to call ahead to the pharmacy to make sure they are still part of the program.
- The purpose of the Tele-Naloxone program is to prepare Iowans by providing them a naloxone kit in advance of a possible overdose. Visit www.naloxoneiowa.org/telenaloxone or call 319-678-7825 to order.
- If you want to go out and purchase it on your own, for a cost between $45-50/box, places like Wal-Mart, CVS, etc. are starting to carry it since it’s over the counter.