When it comes to the opioid crisis, the Wareham Substance Abuse Coalition believes if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Next month, coalition members are expected to review opioid-related data collected from police, the town’s emergency medical service, Tobey Hospital and other groups.

On Wednesday afternoon, coalition members said their efforts are well under way with data collection being at the forefront. Jessica Koelsch and Connie Dolan presented the coalition, a group of community members, with a list of data they collected, but were unable to share at the time.

At next month’s meeting, (on a date to be determined), Koelsch and Dolan will disclose the following information from 2015 to date: the number of total drug overdose calls, the total number of Narcan administrations, EMS logs marked “unconscious,” “overdose,” and “ingestion/poisoning,” Tobey hospital discharges for opioid-related poisonings and death records.

The data includes interviews with religious leaders, representatives from the Wareham Police Department and Emergency Medical Services, as well as a community member.

Though the numbers weren’t shared at the meeting, many issues and misconceptions about the crisis were discussed.

When asked if there was a spike in car accidents due to opioids, Edward C. Jacoub, director of Grants and Sponsored Projects at the Plymouth County District Attorney's Office, explained the difficulty in determining whether or not someone is driving while on opioids.

“There are only 105 drug recognition experts in the state,” he said. “If someone's on opioids, unless they have a certain behavior, it's hard to tell.”

Jacoub also pointed out that county-wide, 98 percent of opioid abusers are white.

“Some of the key stakeholder interviews that I did, there was a majority view that it was low socio-economic status that was associated with opioid overdoses,” said Koelsch. “Actually looking at the data and talking with the EMS, they said, ‘No, it's predominantly middle-class, white and repeat offenders.’”

Read more about the Substance Abuse Coalition here. To join the task force or provide assistance for their efforts, contact Dolan at cdolan@wareham.ma.us, or Koelsch at jesskoelsch@gmail.com.