Forty experts participated in consensus-building discussion on a standard of care opioid overdose response protocol. A critical message emerged: those responding to an overdose should aim to restore breathing without causing withdrawal by supporting the person’s breathing, giving low or standard doses of naloxone (0.4 mg intramuscular injection and <4 mg intranasal spray) until spontaneous breathing is restored, and creating a calm environment. Despite fluctuations in the drug supply, standard dose naloxone is effective.
Population: General Audiences
Compassionate Overdose Response: Summit Highlights and Key Takeaways
Training Guide: Guide to Developing and Managing Overdose Prevention and Take Home Naloxone Projects, NHRC
Providing overdose prevention, recognition, and response education to people who use drugs, their neighbors, friends, families, and the service providers who work with them is a harm reduction intervention that saves lives. This training guide outlines the process of developing and managing an Overdose Prevention and Education Program.
Estimating naloxone need in the USA across fentanyl, heroin, and prescription opioid epidemics: a modelling study
The US overdose crisis is driven by fentanyl, heroin, and prescription opioids. One evidence-based policy response has been to broaden naloxone distribution, but how much naloxone a community would need to reduce the incidence of fatal overdose is unclear. We aimed to estimate state-level US naloxone need in 2017 across three main naloxone access points (community-based programmes, provider prescription, and pharmacy-initiated distribution) and by dominant opioid epidemic type (fentanyl, heroin, and prescription opioid).
Best practices for community-based overdose education and naloxone distribution programs: results from using the Delphi approach
We utilized a modified Delphi approach to develop a set of best practices for OEND delivery. The top 5 ranked best practices were ensuring that SSP participants have low barrier, consistent, needs-based access to naloxone and that there is ample naloxone available within communities. While the remaining fifteen best practices were deemed important, they had more to do with organizational culture and implementation climate.
Vital Strategies – Overdose Prevention Centers Fact Sheet
Overdose prevention centers are public health facilities that provide people with a non-judgmental, hygienic, supervised space to use their drugs. Centers are staffed by peers and usually also healthcare professionals who are trained to intervene immediately in the event of an adverse drug event, such as an overdose. People who visit the centers to use drugs receive safer use supplies free of charge, such as sterile syringes, tourniquets, cookers, and cotton.
A Look Inside Life-Saving Overdose Prevention Centers – Video
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.
XA Look Inside Life-Saving Overdose Prevention Centers – Video
Maia Szalavitz, Guest Essay, New York Times – Do Safe Injection Sites Increase Crime? There’s Finally an Answer
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.
Overdose Prevention Centers, Crime, and Disorder in New York City
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.
Integrating supervised consumption into a continuum of care for people who use drugs
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.
