Allegheny County Health Department can help bring overdose prevention medicine to campus – Pittsburgh Union Progress

Free Naxone may be available soon on some college campuses in Allegheny County.

The Allegheny County Health Department began placing the life-saving overdose drug in vending machines in August and is working to distribute more. Under discussion: college campuses, said Ottis Pitts, deputy director of the Bureau of Food Safety, Housing & Policy and the Department of Health.

Pitts said the Department of Health and two local universities have noticed an increased need for medicine in college residence halls.

“We want this to serve as a low-cost way to get these life-saving medications. But this project goes beyond the vending machines,” Pitts said.

The details of the proposal have not been finalized, Pitts said, and he has not yet disclosed which colleges may participate in the program.

Pitts described three methods of delivery, all of which are already in place in the district: vending machines, which can hold 150 naloxone kits; media-type plastic boxes, capable of holding 48 devices; and medicine cabinets that can hold 15 supplies. Each kit contains two doses.

Carnegie Mellon University has already used similar machines.

In 2024, the university installed three “Wellness to Go” machines. Each machine is stocked with pain relievers and allergy medications as well as condoms, emergency contraception, rapid COVID-19 tests, fentanyl and naloxone test strips.

Safe sex facilities and safe drug use facilities are provided by the county health department, according to the CMU website.

The county health department in August planned seven vending machines carrying Narcan, a form of naloxone, across the county, starting with three. However, two of the first three are no longer valid.

The first machine was installed at JADE Wellness on the South Side, but according to JADE co-founder Alex Perla, it broke within a week of its installation. He said the district replaced the broken machine shortly after, but the other broke. The second machine has not yet been replaced.

Perla said: “The Department of Health is in charge. We are happy to have the machine when it is ready, but we are just waiting for it to be fixed.

A second machine was placed on a public road outside UPMC Western Behavioral Health in McKeesport, but was removed due to a zoning issue, according to a report from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Only the machine outside the Tree of Life Open Bible Church in Brookline remains and is actively dispensing naloxone.

However, naloxone is still available for free by direct request from the harm reduction website and in person through JADE Wellness, Perla said. The district also distributes naloxone at events throughout the area, such as the one in Market Square on Oct. 23.

Pitts’ team needs to refill the machine at least once every two to three weeks, he said.

“As awareness increases, we see more usage [of the machines],” Pitts said.

Anyone can take naloxone from the machine for free. Each dose comes with instructions on how to administer the medicine.

But it is not entirely clear who is taking it. Pitts described the brokers as a “tricky public health policy.” Due to the anonymous nature of the machines, it is difficult to collect and monitor data on who is using them.

“It’s hard to follow, but we’re confident it will make a difference,” Pitts said. “Narcan goes somewhere.”

Since 2017, Allegheny County has seen a decrease in fatal overdoses. Pitts hopes programs like this can help bring that number down quickly.

In addition to naloxone, the new vending machines also include fentanyl test kits, which test for the presence of a powerful synthetic opioid that drives overdoses in the US.

By 2023, 82% of all lethal drugs in Allegheny County will contain fentanyl, according to the county’s opioid dashboard. Pitts says this is the impetus for adding fentanyl test strips to the machines.

“We want people to know the level of risk they are taking when they choose to use something,” he said.

Vending machines have become an increasingly common way to get an overdose of prescription drugs in the community: As of spring, at least 33 states and the District of Columbia had vending machines, according to a department review. government health by CNN.

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