SUMMARY: There are slowdowns and congestion in southern Indiana, particularly on I-64 near Floyd County and US 150. Heavy snow is falling in the area, with snow accumulation on grassy surfaces along I-71 near the Gene Snyder and other areas south. Drivers should be cautious of wet, potentially hazardous conditions, as untreated surfaces may be slippery. Some drivers are advised to avoid the roads today, but for those heading out, extra time is needed to clean snow off vehicles. The accumulation on side streets is minor due to fewer cars, but caution is still recommended.

Road conditions across WLKY viewing area as snow continues to fall

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KY urged to do more to protect children from accidental shootings, drug ingestion

by Sarah Ladd, Kentucky Lantern
February 11, 2025

This story mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please call or tect the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988. 

Easy access and exposure to guns and drugs are killing Kentucky children. 

That’s according to the Child Fatality and Near Fatality External Review Panel, which released its 2024 report last week. 

Kentucky toddlers — four years old and younger — are ingesting substances and dying at “an alarming rate,” the report found. 

Of the fatal overdose and ingestion cases the panel reviewed for 2023, most — 80% — were “potentially preventable,” according to the report. The majority of substances kids ingested in 2023 were opiates, including the powerful synthetic fentanyl. 

In one case, a 1-year-old ingested fentanyl and died. Officials who responded found a “bag of crystal methamphetamine in the bed where the child and mother were sleeping” and oxycodone, an opioid, in the closet. 

Dr. Melissa Currie, a Norton Children’s child abuse pediatrician and member of the panel, said ingestion cases in Kentucky’s children concern her because of “how sick the kids are getting and potentially dying.” 

“It’s getting worse,” she told the Lantern. 

The panel is also tracking a substance called xylazine, which was found in 5% of the cases. This non-opioid sedative or tranquilizer, mainly used in veterinary services, has been increasingly found in the heroin and fentanyl supply.

The Child Fatality and Near Fatality External Review Panel was created in 2012 to conduct comprehensive reviews of child deaths and serious injuries from abuse or neglect. The independent panel of physicians, judges, lawyers, police, legislators and social service and health professionals meets regularly to analyze such cases. It produces an annual report on its findings and recommendations for improvements. 

Among other recommendations, the panel says kids need substance screenings when getting medical care and the state needs to “conduct an aggressive public safety campaign targeting proper medication safe storage.”

The panel reviews just the “small portion” of cases that attract official attention, Currie pointed out. 

“We’re only reviewing those where someone had a concern for abuse or neglect, sufficient to, No. 1, call and make a report, and, for No. 2, (Child Protective Services) to actually accept it for investigation,” she said. “And so that automatically whittles down the number. So I think it’s really helpful to understand that the total numbers in the report are only a fraction of the kids that are actually … having ingestions of, if not illicit substances, then, at least, dangerous substances.” 

That includes, she said, some unregulated THC products purchased at gas stations and wrongfully assumed to be safe. 

“We’re seeing kids who are coming in, getting a hold of what parents are, I think, reasonably assuming are legal substances — that should still be kept out of reach of children,” she said. “There’s no question about that.” 

Gun deaths — accidental and other  

The panel once again is asking lawmakers and policymakers to find ways to encourage safe storage for guns to keep them out of the hands of children.

In 2023, the panel reviewed 12 cases of gunshot injury — 11 of which were fatal — involving children. Of those 12 incidents, nine were preventable, the report states. 

There were four  cases of homicide, which means a caregiver was the shooter, four of suicide and four  of accidents. The average age of children involved in gunshot suicide or homicide is 14 years. Accidents typically occur among children as young as 3. 

In all these cases, the report states, unsafe storage of guns was a risk factor. Rep. Kim Banta, R-Ft. Mitchell, filed a bill this year to hold parents civilly liable for unsafe storage of guns if minors in their care obtain access and cause harm. It’s been assigned to the House Judiciary Committee but has yet to get a hearing. 

In one case reviewed by the panel, a 7-year-old fatally shot his 4-year-old brother while playing with a .410 shotgun in a game of “cops and robbers.” The children regularly played with the gun, which was loaded and beside the refrigerator. 

While the number of children who died and nearly died from incidents involving guns has declined following the worst years of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 and 2021), there are still more than in 2019. 

The decline itself is “hopeful,” the report says, but “it is important to note the panel has reviewed 79 firearm incidents in the last five years resulting in 54 deaths, and 25 near fatalities. The near fatalities often result in lifelong complications, including profound disabilities.” 

Those can include, Currie said, developing a limp, living with a brain injury from lack of oxygen, requiring a feeding tube, living life from a bed or in a wheelchair and more. 

“It can be devastating,” she said. “Widespread brain injury from lack of oxygen applies to our opioid ingestions as well. Those kiddos can stop breathing and suffer tremendous damage to their brain from the lack of oxygen over and above the damage that the drug itself is doing.” 

Education component is ‘huge’ 

How sick or injured a child will be from ingestion or gunshot depends on many factors, Currie with Norton said. Those include the type of substance, how much a child got, if they inhaled or ingested it, where they were shot and more. Some can become symptomatic within seconds, while others take hours. 

When it comes to drugs and substances, Currie said, “their outcome largely is dependent on someone recognizing that they may have had an ingestion” and getting them help quickly. Narcan, even if it’s expired, won’t hurt a child, she said. If a child is having trouble breathing, call 911. 

“If a caregiver … is on medication-assisted therapy for opioid use disorder — so, someone is taking buprenorphine containing products like suboxone or methadone — I highly recommend that all of those homes should have Narcan,” she said. “Narcan is never going to cause harm to a child.”  

Parents and caregivers not fully realizing the lethality of drugs and guns is a “huge” issue, Currie said. 

“We know that some folks who are thick in the throes of addiction are not in a mental space to think about the wellbeing of others, including their children, who they may love very, very much, but not be capable of placing their safety as a priority due to the effects that addiction has on a person,” she said. “That’s one layer. The other complexity layer is that guns have, unfortunately, become a political issue. And so if education is provided in a way that is perceived as being political, then folks aren’t able to hear it and incorporate it and do the right things to keep their kids safe.” 

Panel policy recommendations

The 103-page report lays out a roadmap for improving the safety of Kentucky’s youngest citizens. 

Some of the recommendations made by the panel include:

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services should convene a workgroup to create a standardized safe drug storage guideline for all providers and the public.The Department for Public Health should conduct an aggressive public safety campaign targeting proper medication safe storage and saturating these critical tools throughout Kentucky communities. The campaign should also encourage the use of fentanyl and xylazine testing strips and Naloxone in pediatric ingestions. The Department for Community Based Services should create a Practice Guidance Specific to Safe Storage of Medication.  The governor’s office should convene a task force with the goal of developing and implementing a robust Plan of Safe Care to address the needs of substance-exposed infants and their caregivers.The Kentucky General Assembly, through the Judiciary Committee, should explore model legislative strategies to encourage and support safe storage of firearms. This would include Child-Access Prevention and Safe Storage Laws, funding for evidence-based prevention education and provision of gun locks with every firearm sold to give responsible gun owners the tools to securely store weapons. The Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board should work collaboratively with community partners to fund and raise awareness regarding safe storage practices of firearms.

According to Currie, “the potential to make the problem better is huge if we educate the right people and we get the right policies in place, the right statutory language in place.”

Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com.

Trump administration plans for federal contracts stir worries across Kentucky

by Jamie Lucke, Kentucky Lantern
February 10, 2025

From farmers who have installed fencing for rotational grazing to medical researchers running million dollar laboratories, Kentuckians are worried about Trump administration disruptions to federal contract payments.

University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto on Monday said a decision announced late Friday by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “will cost UK tens of millions of dollars annually and will hit our local and state economies.”

The NIH slashed payments to research grant recipients for so-called indirect costs such as equipment, administration and other overhead expenses. A federal  judge on Monday issued a restraining order temporarily blocking the NIH plan in 22 states but not Kentucky.

Capilouto said the new policy would affect UK research in cancer, heart disease, children’s health, Alzheimer’s and opioid use disorder.

In a message sent campuswide, Capilouto said UK”s “government relations team is in Washington again this week, meeting with our congressional delegation and others to communicate how fundamentally important and serious this issue is to our community and all those we serve through discovery and healing.”

The NIH announced it is lowering payments for indirect costs to 15% for all existing and new contract awards. “This one change, if enacted for the next 12 months, would represent a cut of at least $40 million to the University and its critical research efforts on behalf of the health of our state,” Capilouto said.  

Capilouto said rates for indirect costs have been negotiated between institutions and the NIH and range from 20% of a grant award to 54%, depending upon the research being conducted and the terms of the award.

Payments for indirect costs cover items that make basic research possible, Capilouto said, such as building and outfitting labs; research equipment; ventilation, heat and lighting; technology, and graduate students who work in labs.

In its Friday announcement, the NIH said private foundations that fund research provide substantially lower indirect costs than the federal government and universities readily accept grants from these foundations.

But Capilouto said private foundations do not fund the kind of basic science that the federal government has traditionally supported. “The comparison between a private foundation providing a grant around research in education policy, for example, simply does not involve the same cost or cost structure as a basic science grant that could include building and lab space and all the supports that go along with that infrastructure. The complicated discovery and research our investigators perform cost more than the research often funded by private foundations.”

A spokesperson for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education said: “NIH funding is essential to university research that leads to medical breakthroughs and improved health outcomes for Kentuckians. Indirect funds support facilities and infrastructure needed to advance this work. CPE is monitoring the situation as it develops.”

Conservation payments to farmers frozen

Meanwhile, several media outlets report that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has frozen payments to farmers for conservation projects and possibly other USDA programs.

Myrisa K. Christy, executive director of the Community Farm Alliance, said she began getting calls from Kentucky farmers  saying they could not access USDA payments after a Jan. 27 memo went out from the Trump budget office announcing a freeze on federal payments. 

The memo, which was quickly rescinded, said direct payments to farmers would not be affected, and federal courts have issued orders temporarily blocking the payments freeze.

Nonetheless, Christy said she’s heard from eight individuals or agribusinesses in Kentucky due a total of roughly $500,000 who have been unable to tap their promised payments from the USDA.

 “I asked them ‘have you been told your reimbursement is frozen?’ And they say, ‘no, but I was told I couldn’t draw down.’”

Christy said delays in reimbursements to farmers who have, for example, already put up the money to build high tunnels to prolong the growing season or installed projects to prevent soil erosion can jeopardize a farm’s future. The concerns are coming at a financially stressful time of year when farmers may need to buy extra feed for livestock and are ordering supplies for spring planting.

“The issue is even a few weeks of delayed payments can really impact our small- to medium-sized family farms.” Such uncertainty also discourages new farmers, she said.

Trump signed an executive order on the day of his inauguration freezing spending authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which were enacted when Democrat Joe Biden was president. The freeze includes payments under Natural Resource Conservation Service program contracts.

Christy of the Community Farm Alliance said it’s not always clear to farmers if their conservation projects were funded through those laws or through funding provided by Congress when Republican President Donald Trump was serving his first term.

Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com.