Addiction Treatment Programs in Boston Provide Post-Overdose Support

BOSTON - April 5, 2018 - PRLog -- A new study conducted by the Boston Medical Center (BMC) revealed the different methods of addiction treatment programs specifically for overdose survivors that have surfaced in Massachusetts.

The study shows addiction treatment programs that resulted from the work of first responders, police and fire departments working together with public health agencies to connect local individuals who have survived a drug overdose with harm reduction and recovery services providers.

Alex Walley, MD, MSc, an addiction medicine specialist at BMC's Grayken Center for Addiction and the author of the study, said that the research was motivated by other efforts that had been launched locally.

"We've been working to equip police and fire departments with naloxone kits," he said. "In working with these programs, which we have been doing since 2011, we started to hear that [officers] were working with community outreach providers to do post-overdose outreach. They would get together on a weekly basis and visit the addresses where people had overdosed to talk to either the survivors or their family members. So, this was organically starting to happen."

Walley and his team sent surveys to fire and police departments in all 351 communities of Massachusetts, to find out what each public safety agency was doing to boost substance use disorder treatment,

They found that over 20 percent of the responding agencies were implementing partnerships to provide support or addiction treatment services to overdose survivors and their networks.

The researchers led interviews with those agencies and found four types of addiction treatment programs for overdose victims were employed.

The author said the innovative partnerships featured in the study prioritize overdose survivors due to the fact they are high-risk demographics.

Walley said: "While educating people about overdose prevention and equipping the people who use drugs and public responders with naloxone is very important, it is not enough."

"We have to actually do more proactive outreach to people who are high-risk and people who have an overdose and survive, they're the highest risk," he concluded.

https://www.drugaddictionnow.com/2018/03/19/addiction-tre...