Berkshire Harm Reduction kicked off a new initiative today to install boxes filled with naloxone doses throughout Berkshire County. The drug can reverse opioid overdoses, making it an invaluable tool in combating the region’s high rates of addiction and fatality. The first box – which is open to the public and free of charge – was set up at the Dalton Senior Center this morning. Sarah DeJesus is the program manager of Berkshire Harm Reduction, which is operated by Berkshire Health Systems out of Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. She spoke to WAMC about why flooding the community with naloxone will save lives.
DEJSUS: Harm reduction programs aim to reduce negative consequences associated with drug use. So, whether that's working with people who are using substances and providing new supplies to prevent the spread of infectious disease like HIV and hepatitis, or overdose education and teaching people how to recognize and respond to an overdose, it's really keeping the community safe and working with people struggling with substance use.
WAMC: Part of this story is about recent changes to legality around the drug Narcan. Tell us- What is Narcan, and what has happened recently regarding its legal status in the States?
So, Narcan or naloxone is the pharmaceutical drug that reverses an opiate overdose. And so, it recently became available over-the-counter, which is exciting for us and just really increases access points for people to be able to obtain Narcan.
This new program that will see Narcan boxes go up throughout the Berkshires. Talk to us about it- What exactly is this program going to look like on the ground? And what are you hoping it provides the community?
The goal really is, again, to just increase access points for people to be able to carry, to obtain and to carry Narcan. Narcan, like I said, reverses opioid overdose, and the more access points we can have for people to be able to obtain Narcan, the more likely people are able to respond to an overdose quickly and save people who may be experiencing that in that certain scenario. So really, the boxes will be placed strategically throughout the county, indoors or outdoors, and really just very easily accessible for people.
The first box will be installed in Dalton at the Senior Center. Tell us about the wider scope of the project- How many boxes will be installed over the course of this initiative?
As of right now, there's 20 boxes scheduled to go throughout the county. Like I said, that was our initial number, with the hopes that we'd be able to partner with 20 organizations who agreed to house these boxes. We were actually surprised that those 20 boxes were allocated really quickly, so there's conversations to obtain additional boxes because of the increased interest to house these boxes.
Now, for folks who might walk up to one of these boxes in the wild, can you sort of break down what they're going to look, like how people can access them, just sort of the basics of what this is actually going to look like?
They're really easy to access. There's no electrical components, there's no locking components, there's no data collection or any type of information that's collected from the people who utilize the boxes. The easiest way I can explain it is if you could picture the “take a book, leave a book” boxes. It's just a door that opens and the box is filled with Narcan, and you take one or two boxes or whatever you desire to carry on you, and there's also information in the boxes on how to recognize and respond to an overdose. There's information in the boxes for referrals and resources within the community to access services. They're very easily accessible. We've held public trainings over the last several weeks to try to really engage the public on how to use Narcan, how to obtain Narcan, how to respond in an overdose situation to try to increase that education and awareness for people who might start seeing these boxes. We were being kind of proactive to make sure that people were trained on how to use Narcan.
Given the state of Berkshire County's current experience with drug misuse and possibly fatal relationships with substances, do you have a sense of what the impact of this might be?
Unfortunately, overdose rates continue to increase in the Berkshires and throughout the state. And having more people carry Narcan, the goal is to chip away at those overdose death rates and have the rates decreasing by having, by kind of flooding the community with Narcan and having more people available to respond so that people aren't dying from overdoses.
Sarah, is there anything about this I've not thought to ask you that you want to make sure the public understands about this new program?
I think one of the important points to highlight really is that Narcan doesn't have any negative effects on someone who's not experiencing an overdose. So, if you administer Narcan to somebody who is not in an overdose situation, it's not going to harm that person in any way. So, I think that's important for the public to know who might have reluctance or hesitancy to administer or to carry Narcan. It only has benefits to help someone in an overdose situation.
