Today Addiction Policy Forum released a comprehensive Overdose Awareness Toolkit in collaboration with the University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy (Ontario, Canada). This toolkit comes ahead of International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31st.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 70,237 people died of drug overdoses in 2017, of which more than 47,000 involved opioids. The Overdose Awareness Toolkit includes training videos on how to recognize and respond to an overdose, information about how to administer naloxone, harm reduction education, resources and further reading.
“Learning how to recognize and respond to an opioid overdose can help save a life,” says Jessica Hulsey Nickel, president of Addiction Policy Forum. “We are proud to collaborate with the University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy on this initiative, and we encourage everyone to share these life-saving resources with their communities and loved ones.”
The University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy is an international leader in the harm reduction field and has produced overdose reversal training materials in several languages, as well as content about opioids for chronic pain and cannabis.
"It’s been great to share our resources as the opioid crisis continues to grow," said Dr. Kelly Grindrod, Associate Professor at University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy. "We need as many people as possible to know about naloxone."
Naloxone is a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses by binding to the same brain receptors that opioids do and temporarily pushing out the opioids that are causing the overdose.
To find naloxone near you, call the Addiction Resource Center: 1-833-301-HELP (4357).