Drive to prevent loss of life
To honor International Overdose Awareness Day, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County joined forces to host a resource fair on Wednesday in the portico of the City-County Building, Downtown.
“This is a day many of us mourn tremendous loss in our community, not just over the past year but over many years,” Laura Drogowski, the manager of the Office of Community Health and Safety, said Wednesday morning.
Fatal overdoses have been on the rise in the region since 2019, according to a report released by the county in July. In 2021, 719 people in Allegheny County died from drug overdoses.
Before that, the county had seen overdose death rates climb from 2013 to 2017, then drop off significantly in 2018. Most officials have attributed that drop to a large distribution of naloxone, a medication used to reverse an overdose.
White men have continuously been the largest demographic impacted by fatal overdoses, but Black residents have been disproportionately affected. White residents are dying from drug overdoses at a rate of 54 deaths per 100,000 residents, while Black residents’ rate is 115 per 100,000, according to the Allegheny County medical examiner’s office.
“This drug culture don’t discriminate … and it’s hurting, harming and killing our families and our friends,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey said. “I don’t so much want to get caught up in the statistics. I want you to get caught up in what we got to do to heal people who are going through this tragedy.”
Service providers from the county’s departments of Health and Human Services, as well as Pathways to Care, Prevention Point Pittsburgh, Onala Recovery Center and others, were on hand
Wednesday to provide information on harm reduction and treatment services.
“There are many of you here among us who are in recovery,” Ms. Drogowski said. “And there are many of you who have struggled, and I want to say I’m really, really proud that you’re here with us today. On a day when we work to remember and honor the people who we love and we lost, I also want you to feel honored for the work that you’ve done, the lives you saved, the people you’ve cared for and, I think most importantly, the people you’ve empowered.”
Mr. Gainey said it’s important for the city to “acknowledge and care for” people who are in active addiction, and he thanked the people who work for these various outreach programs.
“For all of you out here today, I am grateful, and the city is grateful,” he said.
He emphasized that the city’s focus is on harm reduction, which includes programs such as syringe exchanges and allowing fentanyl test strips to be distributed.
“All of our work is focused on meeting people where they are,” Mr. Gainey said.