Dr. Thomas Huggett, who works at Lawndale Christian Health Center, opens a box for state Rep. La Shawn K. Ford as he places loose bags of internal Narcan (naloxone) at the intersection of West Jackson Boulevard and South Pulaski Road in East Garfield Park after a press convention a few blocks away, where members of the West Side Heroin and Opioid Task Force promoted harm relief and Ford advocated for passage of House Bill 2, which Ford says will allow the Illinois Department of Human Services and the city of Chicago to open overdose prevention sites on the west and south sides on Friday, July 28, 2023.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Once upon a time they used to broadcast news. Now they are saving lives.
On Chicago’s West Side, 20 of the plastic boxes, the kind where other people may have bought a loose copy of a local weekly, are now filled with anti-overdose drugs.
This is the latest effort to combat overdose deaths in the region.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office released the most recent statistics earlier this week showing that the number of other people dying from opioid overdoses in Cook County continues to rise.
Each of the West Side’s purple boxes contained two hundred doses of naloxone (also known by the name of the Narcan logo), along with instructions on how to use the antidote in case of overdose.
But this effort will be futile, according to prevention groups, until the state authorizes the creation of use sites. On one site, users can rise to the top under the supervision of healthcare providers.
“This would be the most effective form of overdose deaths,” said Dave Jimenez, director of intervention projects for the University of Illinois at Chicago Extension Network, one of the city’s leading overdose prevention providers.
Jimenez, one of several leaders of prevention organizations who spoke at a news convention Friday in the 400 block of South Pulaski Road in West Garfield Park, a known epicenter of Cook County’s opioid crisis.
The groups say the news box technique can be successful on users at times when street awareness groups are out of service.
Free Narcan (naloxone) is in a box at the intersection of West Jackson Boulevard and South Pulaski Road in the East Garfield Park community on Friday, July 28, 2023.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
But, most importantly, the teams arrived together to show their House Bill 2, which would allow safe use of the overdose prevention site.
“We are here united for a cause,” said state Rep. La Shawn Ford, the title sponsor. “It is our friends, parents and young people who are affected and deserve a chance to be sustainable. “
Safe use sites allow drug use and offer complementary facilities, such as housing assistance or counselling to help users recover. There are dozens of such sites around the world, but only a few in the United States.
Until then, other approaches in place come with van-based addiction clinics and even an unofficial use site, where users who are already high can come and be picked up.
The press convention was held next to this site, a tent occupied by outreach staff from the West Side Heroin Opioid Task Force, which operates out of a COIP cell care unit that sits between the first in Illinois to provide Suboxone, a methadone-like treatment.
The University of Illinois Chicago Community Outreach Projects cell clinic, stationed near Van Buren Street and Pulaski Road in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, where members of the West Side Heroin/Opioid Task Force held a news conference Friday.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Lee Rusch, chief executive of West Side Group, said prevention providers began providing other approaches after opioid overdose deaths rose 43 percent to another 1846 people in 2020. The count reached 2000 last year.
Rusch’s organization asked West Side citizens about opening a use site and said many were involved about whether those sites encouraged drug use. The “vast majority agree that anything should be done. “
While opioid overdoses continue to rise, the rate of accumulation has slowed significantly. After that 43% peak in 2020, deaths rose to 5% in 2021 and 3% last year. Rusch attributed this to overdose prevention charts. suppliers, but said it was not enough.
“It’s not a resounding success,” he said. We’re making an investment of millions in these things and other people keep dying. “
Cook County looks set to see how it stacks up this year.
So far this year, there have been 811 opioid-related overdose deaths in the county, said Brittany Hill, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s matrix with 696 cases still pending and the medical examiner expects 70 percent of them to be opioid-related. .
That would put Cook County at 1,298 opioid-related deaths so far this year. Right now last year, the count is 1,060.
Opioid-like deaths are most commonly similar to fentanyl, the man-made drug that combines with heroin but is 50 times more potent. An increasing number are binding to xylazine, an animal tranquilizer.
Tanya Sorrell, a professor of psychology at Rush University Medical Center, asked those gathered for the news conference if they had been affected by overdoses among friends and family. Almost everyone raised their hands.
Sheila Haennicke holds a photo of her son David Haennicke at a news convention on Friday. David, he said, died of a fentanyl overdose in November 2021. Members of the West Side Heroin and Opioid Task Force held the press convention to announce their efforts to overdose deaths in the region.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Sheila Haennicke of Oak Park held a photo of her son, who died of an overdose in 2021. One passerby, who said he was from the community, said he recently had to save someone in that community, one of the antidotes to overdose.
“Black, white, rich, poor, it affects us all,” Sorrell said. “I don’t want to back down. “
Michael Loria is a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times through Report for America, a nonprofit journalism program that targets the newspaper’s politics from communities on the South and West sides.