At least 100 of the 500 naloxone kits assembled by the DCRI’s HEAL Connections team members in March will likely be used to help reverse opioid overdoses and possibly save lives.
The HEAL Connections team – led by DCRI faculty Asheley Skinner, PhD (Population Health) and Rachel Greenberg, MD, MB, MHS, and Christoph Hornik, MD, PhD, MPH (Pediatrics) – partnered with the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (NCHRC) to make naloxone kits on March 21 as an opportunity to connect in-person and learn more about community efforts to stop overdose deaths. Naloxone is a medicine that can reverse an opioid overdose by attaching to receptors in the brain and blocking the effects of opioids. Organizations like NCHRC, with the help of volunteers, assemble and distribute naloxone kits across the state to communities where people are most at risk of overdose. Since 2013, NCHRC has dispensed over 80,000 free community overdose rescue kits that include naloxone and has confirmed reports that at least 20% of the kits were administered successfully by lay people.
HEAL Connections is a new center funded by the NIH HEAL initiative. A partnership between the DCRI and George Mason University, the center’s goals are twofold: to build and sustain community partnerships, and to meaningfully share results with communities and stakeholders that will benefit most from research findings.
“Everyone was so helpful and engaged,” said Loftin Wilson, Harm Reduction Programs Manager of NCHRC. “We made 500 kits and prepped a bunch more stickers and baggies. That’s great work for 20 to 25 people in two hours.”
While assembling the kits, the HEAL Connections team learned how to administer intramuscular naloxone and how North Carolina’s Good Samaritan laws work. The team also learned about the Durham emergency medical response to over 850 opioid overdoses in 2021.
“The purpose of HEAL Connections is to engage community organizations, just like the NCHRC, and make sure that important research on pain and addiction helps all the people who can benefit from the evidence that it generates,” said Andrea Des Marais, a research program leader in the Department of Population Health Sciences who helped to organize the event. “This event was an excellent way for us to better understand the community organizations we want to engage while also benefiting communities in North Carolina.”
Learn more about HEAL Connections and the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition.