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‘Save A Life Day’ Spreads Support, Naloxone Across The State

West Virginians will be out and about in every corner of the state Thursday in an effort to educate their neighbors and hand out overdose-reversing tools with one goal in mind: Save a Life.

Sept. 8 is Save a Life Day in West Virginia.

West Virginians will be out and about in every corner of the state today in an effort to educate their neighbors and hand out tools with one goal in mind: Save a Life.

“The official name for this day is ‘Save a Life Free Naloxone Day’,” said Joe Solomon, the co-director of Solutions Oriented Addiction Response West Virginia (SOAR). “This September 8 anyone can pick up Narcan in all of West Virginia’s 55 counties at over 180 locations.”

Save a Life Day started out with just two counties in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. But in just two years Save a Life Day has established a presence in all 55 counties.

Solomon’s organization helped spread the event across the state in an effort to get the overdose-reversing drug naloxone into as many hands as possible.

“Naloxone was approved by the FDA 51 years ago,” Solomon said. “The way it works is very simple. It pops off the opioid receptors in your brain and pops them off from the opioid if your brain is flooded with opioids. It allows someone’s breathing to come back online. And that allows their consciousness in turn to come back online.”

Naloxone is a keystone of Save a Life Day because having it readily available can be a literal life changer in a state that Solomon calls ground zero of the opioid crisis.

“In all 55 counties, people want to do something to stop their families and their neighbors from losing loved ones,” Solomon said. “Free Narcan day’s a chance for people to say, ‘Hey, I want you to live, hey, you’re important to our community. Hey, I want you to get through this day, I want you to know that I love you.’”

Naloxone is not the only thing on offer during Save a Life Day. Volunteers and workers also offer education on how to use the medicine, as well as information about local addiction and recovery resources.

Perhaps the most important thing available during Save a Life Day are open minds and a lack of judgment.

Brittany Irick is the coordinator for Monongalia County’s Quick Response Team. Her team works to be on-site after a drug overdose to offer support and resources to those affected.

“Instead of stigmatizing those people who make that choice, let’s give them the tool to prevent a death,” Irick said. “Nobody wakes up and says I want to become addicted to drugs today, I throw my life away. And when people hear that message, I think that it really changes their perspective.”

She points out that overdoses do not discriminate and they are not restricted to substance users.

“As we’ve seen an uptick in fentanyl in pretty much everything all across the state all across the U.S., we’ve realized how important it is to get more Narcan out into the community,” Irick said. “Not just for people who are in active substance use but like college kids, even high school kids.”

Discussions of substance abuse and overdose can get grim at times but in speaking to the people involved in Save a Life Day, there is a palpable energy and excitement to see the event touch every community in the state.

“I’m a little bit partial to helping my state because I think it’s beautiful and full of amazing people,” Irick said. “The fact that all 55 counties are coming together to promote this message like this, this is how we get past this. This is how we get past the drug epidemic.”

There’s a saying in addiction recovery circles: You can’t recover if you’re dead.

Some communities are looking at the longer-term impacts of Save a Life Day. In Logan County, to cap off the day’s activities, organizers like Barb Ellis are preparing for a Recovery Parade to close out the day.

“Once you find recovery, you want recovery for anybody and everybody else,” Ellis said.

Ellis is a peer recovery support specialist for Mountain Laurel Integrated Health Care. She says the day isn’t about one organization or individual, it’s about the community coming together to support each other and address the issue of overdoses together.

“We’re going to be doing a recovery walk,” Ellis said. “We’re asking anybody who is in recovery in our county, or anybody who is a family member of somebody who’s in recovery – because we all know that addiction is an individual thing, it’s a family problem – come walk with them.”

Fellow Logan County recovery specialist and QRT program manager John Kangas says visibility is a powerful tool.

“Being able to have, whether it’s five people, 25 people, 50 people out there walk in the streets, that helps break down the stigma,” Kangas said. “They’ll see these people on the sidelines, will see us walking, “Hey, I know him or I know her. I didn’t know they were in recovery. Holy crap.” Yeah. I mean, we’re everywhere.”

Wherever you are in West Virginia today, be on the lookout for a Save a Life Day event in your community.

Huntington Fire Department Carrying Opiate Reversal Drug

The city of Huntington says medication that can reverse the effect of opiates in case of an overdose is now stocked on all of the city fire department emergency response vehicles.

The Mayor’s Office of Drug Control Policy said in a news release that all firefighters have completed training and educational sessions on the medication, naloxone, and how to administer it. The office said five lives have been saved with the medication since the Cabell-Huntington Health Department received a supply of naloxone in February.

The Health Department’s physician director, Dr. Michael Kilkenny, says one of the community’s chief concerns is the increasing number of overdose deaths from opioid-based prescription drugs and heroin.

The Huntington Police Department will receive naloxone certification soon. The Health Department offers free naloxone certification to the public.

Kanawha Health Department to Hold Naloxone Training Thursday

Health officials in Kanawha County will be teaching the public how to use the opioid overdose-reversing treatment naloxone.

The training will take place Thursday at 8 a.m. at the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department. The Marshall University School of Pharmacy is partnering to offer the free training on administering the life-saving drug, known by the brand name Narcan.

The training is suggested for first responders, people at risk of opiate-related overdose and their family members, friends and caregivers.

Naloxone kits will be given out at the end of the training.

Pre-registration is required by Tuesday afternoon.

A new law approved last year lets first responders carry naloxone. A law recently signed by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin will make naloxone available without a prescription starting in July.

Naloxone Training Takes Off When Drug Becomes Available

The Cabell-Huntington Health Department was the first in the state to begin a needle exchange program—a program that allows addicts to exchange their used needles for clean ones in order to prevent the spread of diseases like hepatitis and HIV. Along with a needle exchange, the department has also implemented a training program to teach members of the public how to use the life-saving drug naloxone. But when those trainings began in the fall, they were sparsely attended. Things have changed though since the health department received a donation of naloxone auto-injectors.

Each Wednesday around 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., a Marshall University Pharmacy School Professor teaches anyone who will sit through the hour session how to use a naloxone auto-injector. The trainings however aren’t limited to just that form of opioid antagonist, but also expose trainees to naloxone or narcan nasal sprays.

On a Wednesday in late March, three men joined the Pharmacy Professor for the afternoon session. One man– who wished to remain nameless—says as a former heroin user who has been clean for a year, he just wants to prepare himself for the possibility of a friend’s overdose.

“Simply because I could help somebody, a close friend of mine or something. I wouldn’t want the idea of knowing I could have helped someone and didn’t have the tools to do it with,” said the man taking the training.

C.K. Babcock is the Pharmacy school professor that teaches the classes each Wednesday. When he began the trainings in September in conjunction with the Needle Exchange program, Babcock says barely anyone came.

“Would you come to a training where you learned how to play baseball, but you never got to play baseball? No and that’s exactly how people are here, they’re not going to be able to come in for the training if they can’t get the product, well some people did without the product, but boy we’ve got a lot more with the product,” Babcock said.

"Would you come to a training where you learned how to play baseball, but you never got to play baseball? No." — C.K. Babock, Marshall University School of Pharmacy Professor.

In February, the Cabell-Huntington Health Department received a donation of 2,200 Naloxone auto-injectors or EVZIO from Kaleo Pharma. The injectors are filled with opioid antagonists, or drugs that reverse the effects of an overdose. When combined with additional medical care, drugs like Naloxone or narcan can save someone’s life.

Babcock says since receiving the donation, he’s watched as more and more people have walked through the door to his training. But the lack of free medications wasn’t the only thing keeping people from attending.

Before the donation, Babock says it could often be difficult to find doctors willing to prescribe Naloxone or narcan which a law approved in 2015 allows. Now after they take the class, participants are written a prescription by Doctor Michael Kilkenny, the director of the Cabell-Huntington Health Department. The prescription is written for any of the three types of overdose medications to have filled at a local pharmacy.

“Not all physicians are comfortable prescribing this, especially for people they don’t treat, although the Good Samaritan Law allows us to do that, it still has some constraints, we do have to get educational contact with that person and we have to report who we’ve prescribed too,” Kilkenny said.

That Good Samaritan Law was passed by lawmakers in 2015 and prevents a person from being charged with certain crimes when they call for medical help for someone who is overdosing. It paired with a bill to allow friends and family members of addicts to receive an opioid antagonist prescription to help save lives.

During this year’s legislative session another bill– Senate Bill 431– was passed which will allow pharmacists and pharmacy interns to dispense opioid antagonists, like naloxone without a prescription. The Board of Pharmacy will develop protocols for the distributions.

And access isn’t just being expanded in Huntington. Efforts are being made all over the state to help deal with the issue of overdose deaths. Charleston received a donation of 200 cases of naloxone in mid-March. And while both the Cabell-Huntington Health Department and the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department are training the public to use the naloxone anti-dote, EMS, Firefighters and Police across the state are being trained and using them every day. In 2015 according to the Department of Health and Human Resources there were 2505 instances where naloxone was used for those suffering from an overdose.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.