San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Grant will help prevent deaths from opioids
UT Health San Antonio to receive $11 million next month
UT Health San Antonio is expected to receive $11 million from the state next month to distribute the life-saving opioid overdose drug naloxone statewide and train Texans how to use it.
The money would be used to buy $9 million in naloxone, about 240,000 doses, getting the drug into the hands of more people most likely to be the first to encounter a overdosing drug user: friends, family, librarians, fast-food workers. The money would also expand training programs for first responders.
“I know Texas gets knocked sometimes, but I feel like we’ve been pretty proactive,” said Lisa Cleveland, an assistant professor of nursing at UT Health who runs the school’s naloxone first-responder training and distribution program. “At the state level, they truly recognize that this is a crisis.”
The money from the state’s Health and Human Services Commission would be the largest amount the school has received to fight the problem. In April, UT Health received a
$1.87 million Texas Targeted Opioid Response grant.
For several years, UT Health San Antonio and two other programs — the Texas Overdose Naloxone Initiative and Operation Naloxone at the University of Texas-Austin — have worked to get naloxone into the hands of more first responders and everyday Texans.
Mark Kinzly, co-founder of the initiative and a partner with UT Health in holding naloxone trainings, said the $11 million grant is a huge step forward in preventing overdose deaths.
“It’s hard to even wrap our heads around it, how big this is,” Kinzly said. “It sounds like a huge amount of money, and it is. We could still probably use more, but the fact of the matter is, it will still save a lot of lives.”
In 2017, Texas had 2,831 drugrelated fatalities.
Thom Duddy, vice president of corporate communications for Adapt Pharma, the top maker of naloxone, said Texas is the company’s second-biggest retail market for the drug — retail meaning pharmaceutical prescriptions — and will likely soon surpass Florida.
In a recent week alone, 1,066 prescriptions for Adapt Pharm’s naloxone were filled in Texas, Duddy said. By comparison, California had 611.
The primary form of naloxone is called Narcan, a nasal spray made by Adapt Pharma. The drug reverses the effects of respiratory depression that often lead to death if left untreated.
UT Health has already held several sessions this year to teach people how to use naloxone and is planning more training in September for the San Antonio Police Department. SAPD officers assigned to the Tactical Medic Unit, as well as narcotics detectives, have already received the training but the department plans to expand that to patrol officers.
The San Antonio Fire Department has carried the drug for several years. It was administered by the department 3,229 times in 2014 and 2,882 times in 2015. More recent numbers were not immediately available.
There is also a growing push
to train what are called nontraditional first responders, including friends and family of drug users as well as fellow users, Cleveland said. A recent poll found one in three Texans know someone addicted to painkillers, and Cleveland said anyone could turn into a first responder on the spur of the moment.
“Oftentimes when an overdose occurs, that’s who’s present,” Cleveland said. “We want to make sure that they are equipped, so that if they witness an overdose they can respond to it.”
Kinzly said there has also been a growing focus in Texas on training people who work near places with publicly accessible bathrooms, such as libraries and fast-food restaurants.
People tend to use public bathrooms to inject opioids, such as heroin or its fatally potent relative fentanyl, Kinzly said. This creates the need to ensure that the people who find them are equipped with the medicine and knowledge needed to provide help.
With the added state funding, UT Health will be able to conduct 40 more naloxone trainings throughout the state.
“If you train 50 or 100 people at a clip, it makes a huge difference because they can then go teach other people,” Kinzly said. “It’s pretty exciting … and the ability to distribute that medication is a big deal.”