In 2021, OnPoint NYC opened the first sanctioned overdose prevention centers, or OPCs, in the U.S. They reversed 600 overdoses in their first year of operation and connected thousands of people with addiction services and social supports, including voluntary treatment. We spoke with OnPoint’s staff to learn how OPCs are saving lives.
The new data, published in JAMA Network Open, should ease fears surrounding overdose prevention centers and related policies like drug decriminalization and the provision of clean needles and overdose antidotes — all of which treat addiction as a health issue, not a crime. Politicians need to stop buying into misinformation that is being used to spur a backlash against harm reduction and instead use data to guide policy.
This cohort study found no significant increases in crimes recorded by the police or calls for emergency service in NYC neighborhoods where 2 OPCs were located. Consistent with the city’s commitment to ensuring clients could use the centers free from law enforcement interference, large, statistically significant declines in police narcotics enforcement around the OPCs were observed. These findings suggest that concerns about crime and disorder remain substantial barriers to the expansion of OPCs in US cities, and initial data from NYC do not support these concerns.
Supervised-consumption services are known to be effective in reducing drug-related harms. It is now time to move from asking whether such services are effective to asking whether, how and under what conditions their benefits can be maximized. Integrated and co-located health service models — effectively “one-stop shops” — could improve health outcomes for people who inject drugs by combining the prevention of immediate drug-related harms with access to primary care, mental health care and social service programs.
Bathrooms can provide private, seemingly safe spaces for people to use substances, especially when they are unable to access supervised consumption or overdose prevention sites. However, there can be serious risks to using substances in bathrooms, including overdosing alone and potentially not receiving lifesaving help in time. Restricting access to bathrooms or implementing measures to discourage substance use in bathrooms does not work. Rather, doing so increases risks for people who use substances, staff, and other people at risk of injury due to unsafe bathroom lighting, layout, and so forth. There are ways of making bathrooms safer for people who use substances. This toolkit will help you to do that.
The People Place and Health Collective (PPHC) of Brown University School of Public Health established this website as a nexus for research about overdose prevention centers. It includes a searchable database of all papers published on OPCs plus fact sheets, infographics, and other resources.
Supervised injection facilities in included studies were mostly associated with significant reductions in opioid overdose morbidity and mortality, significant improvements in injection behaviors and harm reduction, significant improvements in access to addiction treatment programs, and no increase or reductions in crime and public nuisance.
Following the outrage over federal funding for “crack pipes,” we wanted to know: what are the benefits of providing supplies for safer drug use? Turns out there are many, but state and federal restrictions make it hard for those benefits to reach the public.
The distribution of smoking supplies has emerged as a promising harm reduction strategy to engage people who use drugs, reduce overdoses, and prevent infectious diseases. In March 2023, NACCHO conducted a survey to better understand the implementation of smoking supplies, including the impact and benefits, factors that support this work, and barriers that undermine it. On July 31st, NACCHO shared the results of the survey and two organizations, The Phoenix Center and Public Health Madison Dane County, shared their experience with implementing smoking supplies. On this page you can find links to the webinar slides and recording here as well as a list of frequently asked questions and their answers.
