Drug deaths increased by 148 percent in the state from 2010 to 2015. For the year 2015, it had 34.3 drug overdose deaths per 100,000 people, second in the nation behind West Virginia, which had 41.5 deaths, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state responded, first by increasing the number of first responders, near 5,000, plus law enforcement, that are able to deliver Narcan to reverse the overdoses. But that was a Band-Aid solution, as responders would save a life only to likely see that person overdose again.
With help from a federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration grant, the state is taking a more proactive approach. The $3 million grant funds a program to allow first responders to do more than just respond but also to act as educators and conduits between the affected individual and a support group that can intervene to prevent future overdoses.
“It’s using our workforce a different way,” said Nick Mercuri, chief of strategy and planning for the state’s Division of Fire Standards and Training and Emergency Medical Services. “That’s the difference in the training; we’re trying to break the cycle. In the past, we’d put them in an ambulance, take them to the hospital and we might see them later that week and do the same thing over and over.”
Now, first responders will be equipped to intervene by targeting those with a problem, helping them develop a support group and educating that group on how to save a life before it gets to the point where EMS or fire or police must respond with a shot of Narcan.
Mercuri said the goal is to bypass the hospital emergency room, where many end up, and develop pathways from first responder to treatment and recovery programs within the communities. “What this does is delivers direct services to people at risk in their support systems,” he said.
The idea is to educate these people and their support groups educate them on what Mercuri called “modified CPR/rescue breathing education.
They’ll be able to teach them how to use Narcan and they will leave them with a dose of it. The idea is that if they have another overdose before they get into treatment, the family member/support system will have the skills to be able to help that individual.”
Mercuri said the overdose epidemic really exploded over the last few years and hit the state especially hard. “It’s been coming for a while, but it’s a little surprising how fast it hit and how significant it is here.”
He said the training and grant offer a chance to get ahead of the problem. Local first responders have been taken aback by the nature of the epidemic. “I know that, in the class I sat in, my eyes opened up,” Salem, N.H., Fire Department EMS Director Brian Allard told The Eagle Tribune. “We have people who have been here 20-plus years, and they were even more taken aback by what they heard.”
Mercuri said the intervention of support people and the education of how to respond to an overdose could make a difference both long- and short-term. “We’re not a huge state, and our EMS is delivered a variety of ways and we’re fairly rural. Sometimes it takes time before first responders can get there.”
