evidence: MILWAUKEE — With roughly 1,500 Wisconsinites losing their lives to an opioid-related overdose in 2022, the state has trended in the wrong direction into last year when it comes to the often-fatal impacts of fentanyl and other opioids. [...] "We're hopeful in that so far this year, we've had a 50% reduction in our overdose deaths compared to last year," Anna Nick, Brown County's public health officer, told Spectrum News 1. "When we looked at the trends since 2017, what we noticed was that since 2017, the cases had continued to increase, and then roughly in the year when we declared fentanyl a public health crisis and kicked several efforts in motion here, we have since seen that curve turn the other way." [...] "We're very excited to see it trending in the right direction," Nick said. "We do know there's a lot of work to do yet, but we're hopeful in seeing that reduction in cases that we can continue to work on strategies to further reduce the amount of overdoses in Brown County."