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03/13/2019 12:00 AMThe nation is facing an opioid epidemic and Connecticut is a battleground: From 2012 to 2016, opioid-related deaths increased in Connecticut at four times the national average. The Westbrook Local Prevention Council hopes to put residents on the front lines.
The council is hosting a program to train citizens to administer opioid overdose medication that could save lives on Monday, March 18, at 6:30 p.m. at the Westbrook Library.
Narcan, the brand name for naloxone, is an opioid antagonist, used to quickly counter the effects of an opioid overdose, which include critically slowed or halted breathing. Those who participate in the training can obtain a Narcan nasal spray to take with them, which they can administer to a loved one in the case of an opioid overdose.
“In order to have Narcan in your medicine closet, you need to be trained to administer it,” said Jacqueline Ward, director of Westbrook Youth & Family Services.
The March 18 training program, which is open to everyone, was also offered last year, but this time will include suicide prevention training for those who choose to stay.
The training will be provided by BHcare, a regional nonprofit organization providing mental health and substance abuse care. Tracy Leary, a ShopRite pharmacist, will provide Narcan to participants with health insurance; those who are not insured may obtain the Narcan from BHcare, according to Ward.
“There is some mental health/behavioral health parallels between opioid misuse and mental health issues,” Ward said.
BHcare will also provide the suicide prevention training, known as QPR: question, persuade, refer.
“It’s a tool when concerned about a friend or acquaintance to know the steps to go through to help that person get help,” said Ward.
Lyn Connery is a student assistance counselor contracted by Westbrook High School from Rushford, a substance abuse and addiction treatment provider. She works with students on education, prevention, and intervention, and hopes that high-school students will attend the training.
“My motto is: Anybody that has anybody in their life that has an [opioid abuse] issue should have Narcan in their house,” Connery said. “It’s a miracle drug. You can save someone’s life.”
In 2012, Connecticut passed the Narcan law, which allows “providers to prescribe, dispense or administer Narcan to any person to prevent or treat a drug overdose,” according to the website of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.
Connery stresses that citizens who administer Narcan “should always call 911. You always want to involve medical professionals immediately.”
Narcan is considered safe and not addictive, and is not harmful if administered to someone who is not suffering from an overdose.
“There’s really no reason that Narcan can’t be out in the population,” Ward said.
Part of an Ongoing Effort
Westbrook’s Local Prevention Council is made up of representatives from the public schools, the Youth & Family Services Agency, the town government, and Parks & Recreation Department, explained Ward. Westbrook and Old Saybrook have pooled mini-grants provided by the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to increase their efforts to educate the public on the issue.
“It’s a really smart approach that the mini-grant is taking is to give some money to the individual communities,” Ward said, adding that local agencies “know the population the best and how to communicate information” and allowing local control is preferable to employing a “uniform strategy. There are different needs and different populations.”
Some of the funding will pay for a preview at the Westbrook movie theater of an “educational piece on opioid misuse and prevention,” Ward said. A billboard will be erected in the town in April.
“We even sent out information to realtors,” said Ward. “People go to open houses and go through medicine cabinets” looking for opioids to steal, she explained.
“I’m hoping the tide has turned,” she said. “The 2018 numbers are starting to show at least a plateau if not a decrease in opioid [related] deaths.”
Ward credits a 2015 state law, amended in 2016, that requires health-care providers to register opioid prescriptions in a statewide database to monitor opioid use among patients and prevent abuse.
The Connecticut Problem
A confluence of circumstances has resulted in the high number of deaths in Connecticut, explained Robert Heimer, professor of epidemiology and pharmacology and director of the Emerging Infections Program at the Yale School of Public Health.
“Although [researchers have] been doing work on it for a while, the state government was a little late to respond,” he said.
Research indicates that deaths from prescription opioids are relatively stable, he explained, whereas fentanyl, a synthetic drug “much more potent than heroin,” is killing more people each year.
There is an “almost universal presence of fentanyl in the street heroin. Sometimes there’s no heroin there at all,” said Heimer. Traffickers “order fentanyl from a Chinese supplier and have it shipped in. It’s really easy to avoid detection.”
According to data released by the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on March 1, the number of opioid-related deaths in Westbrook were one in 2017 and two in 2018. Old Saybrook’s data was identical. In Clinton, there were four deaths in 2017 and five in 2018.