This project will enable peer-networks in Detroit's most opioid-impacted communities to distribute enough naloxone (overdose antidote) to save +700 lives. Your donation could save a life this week. Plus, 93% of overdose survivors are still alive 1 year later--so your donation will give someone's daughter, son, husband, wife, or grandchild a great shot at living long enough to make it to treatment and recovery.
Eight of the 10 highest overdose death rates in Michigan from 2013 through 2015 were in blue-collar communities of metropolitan Detroit. These are post-industrial urban neighborhoods, buffeted by economic decline and unemployment, where access to healthcare resources is often poor. The Opioid Crisis Response Fund will enable peer networks, including people in recovery, that are already embedded in these communities to distribute enough naloxone (overdose antidote) to save over 700 lives.
Peer-to-peer naloxone distribution is enormously effective at saving lives. (To illustrate, in San Francisco during 2017, peers used naloxone to reverse +1250 overdoses, while SF police reported 27 uses of naloxone in the same period.) In the communities of downriver Detroit with the highest rates of overdose fatality, we are connected to networks of individuals with personal backgrounds in use of and recovery from opioids. They are ready to get naloxone directly where it needs to go.
Naloxone is our key tool for ensuring overdose survival, and survival is square one of long-term recovery. Over 93% of people who survive an overdose are alive 1 year later, and syringe access programs regularly report that they refer 20%-30% of their clients to treatment every year. Getting naloxone into the right hands, and helping as many people as possible to survive an overdose, may be the most powerful way we can ultimately increase the number of people in treatment and long-term recovery.
