Three Things To Read This Week

1. Most Mental Health Calls In Chicago Now Handled By Mobile Crisis Team, Not Police. 

For WGN News, Dana Rebik and BJ Lutz report that in the past year, Chicago’s First-response Alternative Crisis Team, or FACT—a “22-member mobile team of crisis counselors, call takers and peer engagement specialists”—have “resolved 94 percent of calls without law enforcement” involvement. Lutz and Rebik explain that the team has “completed more than 4,400 calls” with about 1,100 of them involving the mobile crisis team “where a crisis counselor and peer are dispatched” to a patient. 

Elinor Marboe, program manager for FACT, explained to the news station that the goal of the program is “to help people stabilize and to decrease interactions between law enforcement and someone experiencing a mental health crisis whenever possible.” That’s why the team provides follow-up care for up to 30 days after the initial call for service.

The mobile crisis team is part of a larger “overhaul of Chicago’s mental health system” championed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, which includes doubling the size of “non-police emergency response” programs [which will also help “relieve pressure on overworked police”] and the “reopening of two of the city-run mental health centers closed by past mayors.” As Jake Sheridan reports for The Chicago Tribune, Johnson’s plan is rooted in personal experience with his older brother Leon, “who dealt with untreated mental illness and died addicted and unhoused.”

2. Tampa Launches First-In-The-Nation Drone To Deliver Lifesaving Medicine And Equipment. 

People living in rural areas often have to wait longer for first responders to arrive in an urgent situation like an overdose or acute mental health crisis. That’s why, in Florida, Manatee County and Tampa General Hospital have partnered to launch the nation’s first “program that uses drone technology to deliver life-saving emergency equipment to 911 callers [while] improving response times for health-related emergencies.” 

Here’s How The New Program Works: For WFLA, NBC News’ local affiliate in Tampa, Brody Wooddell reports that traditional first responder response teams are deployed as usual after a person calls 911 reporting an opioid overdose. Simultaneously, though, dispatchers can now also deploy “drones carrying automated external defibrillators (AEDs) [for cardiac arrests], NARCAN Nasal Spray [for opioid overdoses], and tourniquets [for other physical trauma].” 

The fast-moving drone can reach the caller-in-need in about two minutes. Once the drone lands near the caller, the equipment and medicine comes with operational instructions on video so that the tools can be immediately put to use. At first, the drone will be operational Monday-Friday, from sunup to sundown, in a 3.5 mile area of the hospital, but the county expects to have the drone expand to 24/7 operation in a 35-square-mile area by the end of the summer, Victoria Villanueva-Marquez reports for The Miami Herald.

Here’s what researchers have found on the promise of medical drones to deliver lifesaving care as a complement to existing first responder efforts:

• Narcan Deployed Fast Via Drone. A study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine found that the use of “[f]our drone bases [in Durham, North Carolina] could reduce response time [for overdose related 911 calls] by 4 minutes 38 seconds.” That’s a 50% reduction in response time—across 2,327 suspected opioid overdose incidents reported in Durham County over the year the study took place, “[t]he average time from 911 call to ambulance arrival at scene was 10 minutes 46 seconds.” 

• Even Untrained Bystanders Can Quickly Administer Drone-Delivered Narcan. In Substance Abuse, a 2023 study from researchers at Purdue University explored how long it takes “an untrained bystander to an opioid overdose [to] successfully administer drone delivered naloxone after viewing video instructions” on the drone. The study found that the “average time to remove and administer naloxone was 62 seconds.” 

3. “Overdose Deaths Dropped in U.S. in 2023 for First Time in Five Years.” 

That’s The New York Times’ headline for a new article from Jan Hoffman who reports “the rare good news in the decades-old addiction crisis.” Here are two examples of the types of programs and services that contribute to the drop—increased Narcan access and the emergence of overdose response teams.

• Increased Narcan Access: The New York Times highlighted what city, public health, and law enforcement leaders have been championing for years—making Narcan more widely available can save lives. Indeed, to help combat the overdose crisis, leaders across the country are providing access to the easy-to-administer medication in schools and churches, bars and restaurants, in public transit stations and airlines, local vending machines and over the counter at pharmacies. 
  
  Law enforcement and public health officials frequently credit increased availability to narcan with the drop in overdoses. In Arkansas, Kirk Lane, the former Benton police chief, told The Arkansas Advocate’s Mary Hennigan that after “about 80,000 people received [Narcan] and were taught how to use it,” the state saw a 13% drop in overdose deaths last year. In Vermont, a state that saw a 5% drop in opioid overdose deaths last year, health officials told WCAX’s Ike Bendavid that the state’s free “Narcan vending machine,” which has distributed hundreds of Narcan doses since first launching just last August, is owed part of the credit for the decrease. As one public health official said:  “If we had a Narcan vending machine in every rural community, so folks had that access, we could potentially get ahead of the overdose numbers we are seeing and wipe it out.”

• Overdose Response Teams. Another likely source of the drop in overdose deaths is the emergence of Overdose Response Teams, often housed in city fire departments, which save lives by responding to the scene of an overdose and administering immediate treatment and then connecting the patient to addiction centers and other wraparound services. In Wisconsin, for example, Spectrum News’ Anthony Dubruzzi reports on the Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative, which is composed of “two teams [based in the fire department] that [comb] through EMS and dispatch data to find the fatal and non-fatal overdoses in the county.” The teams then “follow up, ideally 24 to 48 hours later, with the individual and loved ones” and connect them to medical, housing, and other community resources.