Navajo County may be one of the more rural areas of Arizona — 42 percent of the county’s 9,953 square miles is Native American reservation land — but don’t think for a second that protects it from the state’s opioid crisis. In fact, Navajo County had 183 opioid overdoses between June 2017 and November 2018.
Limited public transportation, limited phone and internet service and lack of access to drug treatment centers only fuel the problem as do Navajo County’s high rates of poverty — 26.2 percent