A look at the mission to stop drug overdoses in Western Pennsylvania
Pastor Lance Rhoades of Tree of Life Open Bible Church in Brookline works to stop drug overdoses from happening in his community.
He hands out Narcan for free, a nasal spray containing naloxone that can revive an overdose victim.
“It's not just somebody's bad choice or bad behavior. We have really bad ideas when it comes to how we stigmatize somebody dealing with substance use,” Rhoades said. “When we realize that somebody got addicted to a medication from a sports injury or a car accident or because a doctor just overprescribed them a medication at one point in time.”
He joined a study by the Program Evaluation Research Unit, known for short as PERU. It's a UPMC group researching how to prevent overdose deaths by getting community leaders and other resources all working together rather than separately.
Jan Pringle, a professor of pharmacy and therapeutics, headed the study.
“The interesting thing is that people think it’s an inner city, but it's actually very rural, especially in parts of Pennsylvania,” Pringle said. “The level is almost two times that of the national average in some of our communities which which is pretty rural. We wanted to change it and we believed we could change it using this process we had used with organizations.”
It began in 2016. They studied 47 Pennsylvania counties, with 29 of those using this new system. She brought together community leaders, coroners, police, first responders, emergency room doctors, and clergy to work together to address the problem rather than tackling it separately.
The result: The communities using this system saw a 30% reduction in overdose deaths — that's 1,818 lives saved in all.
“They're like anybody else,” Pringle said. “People think that it’s just people that are poor, people of color that succumb to these addictions, but it's people from all socio-economic strata. It's an equal opportunity disease.”
These are the first findings of its kind released anywhere in the world and Pringle and Rhoades hope the system spreads.
“I think the findings are incredibly significant because they show when communities work together or to prevent overdoses, it actually works,” Rhoades said. “People live; people survive.”
The research officially ends in April.
The $700,000 per year study was funded by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and delinquency.