Three Things To Read This Week
1. Voters Believe That Addiction Stabilization Units Make Communities Safer.
Addiction Stabilization Units are specialized care centers staffed by medical professionals who provide comprehensive care to patients experiencing an opioid overdose. These centers are opening across the country from Portland, Oregon to Waukesha County, Wisconsin to about a dozen locations in Florida—where Governor Ron DeSantis earlier this year “expanded the state's addiction recovery program.” The Florida initiative is modeled after the much-lauded addiction stabilization unit in Palm Beach County that Safer Cities previously covered.
To gauge public support for Addiction Stabilization Units as a public safety strategy, Safer Cities recently conducted a national survey of 2,400 registered voters.
We defined addiction stabilization units as “specialized care centers inside of a hospital, such as in an emergency room, that are staffed by psychiatrists, emergency room physicians, nurses, and social workers” that “provide comprehensive medical care to patients experiencing an overdose, including treatment to manage cravings and withdrawals, developing long-term plans, and connecting patients with treatment facilities and social services such as housing.”
Then, we asked: “How effective do you think addiction stabilization units are as a method of making your community safer?”
Here are the results:
83% Of Voters Say Addiction Stabilization Centers Are “Effective” At “Making Your Community Safer.”
By a 72 point margin—83% to 11%—voters view addiction stabilization units as “effective” as opposed to “not effective.”
These results also reflect broad bipartisan support, including 94% of Democrats and 77% of Republicans who say addiction stabilization units are effective.
The Most Effective Arguments In Favor Of Addiction Stabilization Units. We provided participants with “a few statements about the effectiveness of addiction stabilization units” and then asked them to tell us “how convincing, if at all” each of those reasons are “for implementing addiction stabilization units as a public safety policy?” Here are the three most persuasive arguments:
+76 Net Effective (88% to 12%): “Instead of sending people either to jail or to crowded emergency rooms, addiction stabilization units allow people in crisis to get immediate care in a specialized hospital setting and also connect them to the ongoing services they need to change their life.”
+72 Net Effective (86% to 14%): “A recent study found that after finishing a drug detoxification program, as many as 1-in-3 people go right back onto the street without scheduled follow-up care. By contrast, addiction stabilization units connect people with ongoing services and support, which increases the likelihood that they will receive addiction treatment and decreases the risk of a future opioid overdose.”
+68 Net Effective (84% to 16%): “We can’t simply arrest and jail our way out of the opioid crisis. Addiction stabilization units get to the root of the problem; saving lives by treating overdoses as they happen while working to prevent the person from overdosing again in the future.”
When Forced To Choose, Voters Prefer To Allocate New Public Safety Dollars To Addiction Stabilization Units Than To Hiring More Police Officers. In addition to exposing participants to a variety of arguments in favor of addiction stabilization units, we also exposed participants to an equal number of arguments in opposition to spending more money on these programs.
After participants heard arguments for and against addiction stabilization units, we asked:
“Knowing what you know now about addiction stabilization units, if your city or community was looking to invest additional funding to make your city safer, would you prefer that they…spend the additional funds on addiction stabilization units to address community safety [or] spend the additional funds on hiring more police officers to address community safety?”
Here are the results:54% = “Spend the additional funds on addiction stabilization units to address community safety.”
37% = “Spend the additional funds on hiring more police officers to address community safety.”
2. Overdose Response Teams Launch Around The Country.
In Portland. For FOX12, Ezra Kaplan reports on Portland Fire and Rescue Department’s overdose response team—Community Health Assess and Treat, or CHAT which “provides immediate, life-saving care in the field for people who have overdosed on opioids.” The city created the team, composed of paramedics armed with Narcan and trained to handle overdose-related calls because firefighters “were being kept from being ready for an actual fire” due to the sheer volume of the overdose crisis.
As Deputy Fire Chief Stephanie Sullvan explains, the team is already seeing success: “About 68% of the people who we responded to who had opioid overdoses, we were able to treat them in the field and not send them to the emergency department. We’ve saved $9 million in the health care system.” The CHAT team also provides people who overdose with connections to opioid treatment programs.
FOX12’s full 7-minute segment on the CHAT program is excellent and worth your time:
In Sacramento. For CBS News, Hunter Sowards reports on the Sacramento Fire Department’s Street Overdose Response Team, or SORT—“which includes a vehicle team of two firefighter paramedics” with a special “focus on the unhoused [which] make up a significant number of overdose emergency calls.” Local leaders are lauding SORT as a key part of the “remarkable progress in the battle against the opioid crisis [in Sacramento County], reporting a 56% reduction in fentanyl-related deaths between 2023 and 2024.” Lori Miller, the behavioral health division chief at the county’s Department of Health Services explained that the success the county is seeing isn’t due “to fewer people using fentanyl, but rather a direct result of the comprehensive support systems we've implemented.”
In North Carolina. For Chapelboro, Emma Cooke reports on Orange County’s Post-Overdose Response Team, or PORT, which sends a “three-person team [composed of paramedics] to opioid overdoses immediately or within 24-72 hours of an overdose event and also works to connect those at risk of experiencing [opioid use disorder] to other resources and services.” The team can even provide “medication on a daily basis for up to seven days, [after which] the team [finds] the best treatment location for that person and ensures that they have access to it for an extended period of time.”
Related: For the Carteret News-Times, Todd Wetherington reports on a PORT unit in Carteret County, which functions in a similar way to the Orange County team, but also has a partnership with the local hospital which “allows them to provide services in their emergency room and throughout the facility” if an overdose patient is in need of additional medical care following a PORT response. The team also “provides wellness checks at two days, a week, two weeks, a month and then three months after the initial contact, even if the individual does not request services.”
3. Three New Universities Put Narcan On Campus After The Overdose Reversal Medicine Saved A Life At The University Of Wisconsin This Fall.
For WMTV, Shaina Nijhawan reports on Ruben Schuurs, a student who works at the university, who “carried out life-saving measures earlier this month after a person overdosed in one of the lounges.” Schuurs rushed to the lounge upon learning of the person experiencing an overdose and administered Narcan—using the training that he received from the university as a student worker on campus. Schuur told the news station that after deploying the Narcan dose, “in a matter of like a minute… the gentleman just wakes up, he is confused, of course, he’s disoriented… but other than that, he is pretty much okay.”
Dr. Bonnie Milas, a physician and professor of critical care medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, a vocal supporter of increased Narcan access explained to the news station that Narcan “should be in every home, every campus, next to every [emergency kit] in the United States [because] it’s effective, it works.” It’s also safe for almost anyone to administer the medicine as it has no effect when consumed by a person who is not having an overdose.
Now, three additional universities are increasing access to the life-saving medicine:
“Pittsburgh Universities … Make [Narcan] More Readily Available To Students.” For New Castle News, Colleen Hammond reports on the University of Pittsburgh, as well as neighboring Chatham University, installing Narcan dispenser cabinets on their campuses.
Hayden Barns, a registered nurse at Chatham University, explains that “each cabinet will hold 20 doses of [Narcan] and be accessible 24/7.” The university placed dispensers in heavy foot traffic areas around campus and inside the largest student lounge.
At the University of Pittsburgh, administrators are taking a further step to proactively offer student groups, including sororities and fraternities, training on where to find and how to use Narcan to overcome the natural hesitation that non-medical professionals sometimes feel about using using the medication in a situation where it's needed.
University Of Arkansas Installs Narcan Vending Machine On Campus. For Axios, Alex Golden reports on the partnership between Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin and the university to combat opioid overdose deaths on campus by installing a vending machine stocked with “3,000 fentanyl harm prevention kits, plus [Narcan].”
Staff at the university’s health center will also train students on how to administer the medicine. Attorney General Griffin explained that this effort is starting on campus but will soon expand to other strategic locations across the state. “Fentanyl is a scourge on our society, and it disproportionately impacts our young people,” Griffin said. “This multifaceted initiative to help protect college students from the risk of opioid overdose… will save lives.”University Of Texas Distributes Free Narcan To Students. For KLTV, April Pierdant reports on the new effort at U-Texas at Tyler, about ninety minutes outside of Dallas, handing out “free Narcan to students on campus to help raise awareness on opioid overdose[,] the fentanyl crisis, [and] ... to help and save lives.” Students, staff, and faculty can now pick up their free Narcan at various distribution sites on the main campus as well as the two satellite campuses in the city “with no questions asked, judgment free, stigma free, just to have Narcan to take with them.” Simone Brown, a UT-Tyler Pharmacy student, told the news station that she supported the effort on campus, explaining: “Everyone should carry Narcan. I would like to think of it as an EpiPen. You want to have it on you, and you want to hope that you never use it, but it’s good to always have it in case of emergencies.”
