Minneapolis is facing an opioid epidemic with the town’s increasing overdose rates alarming many, including local marketing agency, SixSpeed.
Grant Parsons, a creative director for the corporate, has lost people in his life due to drug addiction. It was those addictions and overdoses amongst family members that became one among the explanations he wanted to depart his hometown in Arizona.
“On the time that I used to be growing up and going to highschool I had loads of friends that suffered from addiction,” Parsons said. “In loads of respects, I actually selected coming as much as Minnesota for school and stuck around after that as a technique to get away from a few of that stuff.”
In more moderen years, he has learned that those struggles weren’t unique to 1 area. From 2017 to 2021, fatal opioid overdoses in Minneapolis increased by 130%. Previous MinnPost reporting checked out how Minneapolis has been hit by fentanyl and the rising variety of overdose deaths.
“You come to seek out that it’s not regional. It’s type of a nationwide epidemic and it rears its head in another way. It’s sad regardless where you go. I’m sure all of us know someone through ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ that’s affected by this and you may just not know,” Parsons said.
At SixSpeed they recognized that many employees have personal connections to overdoses – and so they wanted to seek out a technique to reduce the variety of fatal overdoses. They considered ways to make naloxone – a drug that may reverse the consequences of an overdose – more accessible to everybody.
“At this point, I believe everybody has been touched by it (overdoses) in some form or fashion and it was loads of people on the agency that it had direct impact with family members,” said Kevin Reilly, the CEO OF SixSpeed. “It got here out of just more of a brainstorm about community efforts, and the way can we serve the community more. The concept got here about that one among the core issues right away is just lack of availability of Narcan (naloxone) in areas of need.”
People from their team met with Southside Harm Reduction Services, a company that connects individuals with supplies for reducing harm, like Narcan, test strips and sterile syringes. In addition they provide trainings to others on the right way to use Narcan, so individuals are informed and in a position to step in during an emergency.
“They (SixSpeed) reached out to us,” said Zachary Johnson, a program director with Southside Harm Reduction Services. “That happens every infrequently where a for-profit … will reach out and ask how they’ll get entangled and volunteer and support. But their outreach to us was a bit of bit different in that they desired to specifically speak about this project. I believe that they had this project in mind already.”
Through their conversations, the corporate decided its approach can be to place boxes with a free supply of nasal naloxone in various locations. Last week, the primary box was placed on the agency’s office in St. Louis Park.
Little Free ‘Reviveries’
The goal is for the boxes, often called Little Free “Reviveries,” to be supplied with 40 doses of nasal naloxone, and restock them weekly, Parsons said. The corporate selected nasal naloxone, which is costlier – as much as 40 times greater than intramuscular – Johnson said. It does have certain benefits, like being easier to make use of and fewer invasive to the body. Johnson said if the reviveries will be financially sustained, they’d make a big effect within the Twin Cities.
“I believe it’s a step within the direction that we’d prefer to see more broadly around harm reduction in naloxone access and overdose prevention,” Johnson said. “We’d like to see these sorts of Narcan stations positioned around like you’ll see an AED (automated external defibrillator) machine in the identical type of style and placement, like inside businesses, which might really help address access.”
Having these boxes around public places may even will get at reducing the stigma related to drug use and addiction. SixSpeed intentionally wanted it to be clear what the boxes are meant for.
“The rationale people will not be proactive (in talking about addiction) is because there’s such a stigma attached,” Johnson said. “This type of a project really addresses stigma in an enormous way. To have an ad agency make good quality Narcan stations, after which do the work of outreach to businesses, venues, libraries and places like that, really helps address stigma and accessibility at the identical time.”
There’s an enormous need for Narcan in the town. Johnson estimates that Southside Harm Reduction Services goes through around 10,000 doses of intramuscular Narcan every six weeks. It has more funding through grants to sustain that, but SixSpeed is fundraising to sustain the initiative.
SixSpeed has raised under $1,000 in public funding up to now, in line with Reilly, the corporate’s CEO. Parsons said two doses of nasal Narcan costs between $35-$50 right away, which might total between $700 and $1000 to produce a revivery with 40 doses.
This week, SixSpeed plans to open one other revivery with the assistance of a community partner near Broadway in north Minneapolis.