06/26/2024 05:00 AM EDTTOLEDO, Ohio — A multiyear experiment in this working-class city on Lake Erie’s banks holds clues to how America could get a handle on its overdose crisis — if politicians embrace the lessons.
“That’s what we’re trying to move towards, but it’s really hard,” said Mahjida Berryman, Lucas County’s supervisor of overdose prevention and harm reduction. But in Toledo, a data-focused approach showed promise. Federal funds paid for iPads to help collect and share data and offer videos to train people to use the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone. It bought a mobile van for educational outreach and naloxone distribution. And it came with access to a staff who coordinated and analyzed data, designed interventions, and helped with marketing.
New York’s Cayuga County, a rural upstate area of less than 100,000 people that hangs off of Lake Ontario west of Syracuse, brought overdoses down 40 percent between 2021 and 2023. And after hitting a peak in 2020, deaths fell from 23 to seven in the following three years. What she found was that logistical barriers were preventing many people from getting help. Treatment sites could be an hour drive and it could take days if not weeks to connect with a provider.
By that time, Salvage had made another critical choice. She created a substance use disorder treatment program within her county mental health clinic, so that she could directly connect people to care. “If somebody’s ready to seek help, that person doesn’t have weeks, because it’s easier to use than to get treatment,” said Salvage.In Sullivan County, 100 miles northwest of Manhattan in the Hudson Valley, participants in HEALing communities are also frustrated with state policies that make it difficult to get people the care they need.
Sitting in the basement of the county’s community services office stuffing doses of naloxone and fentanyl test strips into plastic envelopes, they complained about the lack of treatment availability. Local addiction treatment providers can’t take in more patients, they said, because they don’t have the staff.
“They’re spending millions, millions!” said Curry. “We don’t have a detox or an inpatient treatment facility in Sullivan County. Yet we have nine opioid overdose prevention programs.”
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