By Apurva Mahajan
The University of Maryland Health Center hosted one of its bimonthly naloxone training sessions and provided community members with free naloxone on Feb. 8.
Naloxone, also known by its brand name Narcan, is a life-saving drug that is administered to offset the effects of an opioid overdose. The Health Center’s training taught attendees how to spot the signs of an overdose, how to administer naloxone nasally and who to call in the event of a suspected overdose.
Madeleine Moore, the Health Center’s Alcohol and Other Drugs Education Coordinator, explained in an email that naloxone works by putting a temporary cap on opioid receptors in the brain so the opioids in a person’s system cannot latch onto the receptors. This in turn allows a person’s breath to temporarily go from fatally slow to normal levels while emergency medical assistance arrives.
The Health Center is a designated Overdose Response Program, meaning the Maryland Department of Health has authorized it to distribute naloxone to community members for free through a partnership with its in-house pharmacy. For years, the Health Center initially provided naloxone training by request, but in fall 2022 they began to host trainings that anyone could sign up for.
Ella Rosenthal, a sophomore community health major, went to the training and said that it is a resource more students should take advantage of.
“It was like an hour of my life and we were all able at the end of the training to get a prescription dose of Narcan, we all learned how to administer it. I definitely think that this is something that the Health Center is making really, really easy and really accessible to students,” said Rosenthal.
Junior public health science major Rose Aniakwa works as a pharmacy technician and explained that in the state of Maryland, a prescription is not needed to purchase naloxone, and most insurances cover it.
“Most people that get Narcan at my pharmacy, it’s people who are very old and have long term health conditions . . . just in case, if anything happens, with all those pain meds they’re taking . . . I’ve never really seen younger folks try and get Narcan,” Aniakwa said.
Drugs such as cocaine and marijuana mistakenly or knowingly get laced with fentanyl, the opioid that is responsible for the highest percentage of lethal overdoses. The Health Center provides students with fentanyl test strips, a harm reduction tool that allows people to know whether or not drugs have been laced.
Substance use is a symptom of larger mental health issues that people face due to struggles in their lives, said Pooja Dharmendran, a junior physiology and neurobiology and global health policy major. Policy decisions surrounding drug use should also be taken into account, she said, as they may be the reason that people turn to opioids in the first place.
Dharmendran is the leader of the Frederick County action team for Combatting Overdose in Rural Areas, a Maryland student-run nonprofit founded in 2020 that works to provide rural areas with education and treatment for the opioid epidemic.
“We could increase funding towards education, towards welfare, towards affordable housing,” said Dharmendran. “There are ways that we can build up the community from the ground up and it would just prevent a lot of issues such as drug abuse.”
Stella Shanker, a freshman geographical sciences major, said that more education on overdosing and why people choose to use opioids in the first place would be a good step going forward to help combat the epidemic.
“If you don’t have someone who you know who was suffering because of [opioids], you might be completely unaware of what it actually consists of,” she said.
Opioid overdose is a topic close to many students at this university. Brianna Martin, a freshman neuroscience major, knew a college student who dealt with an opioid addiction and died due to an overdose.
“It just took that one overdose for it to be catastrophic for her and the lives of everyone around her. And, you know, you think about what if somebody had Narcan and saw and could have saved her life?” she said.
Martin said that she would like to see more people who know how to administer Narcan carrying it, especially in places where overdoses may be more likely to occur like bars or parties, but also in their day-to-day lives.
“Even if you don’t think that opioid overdose is relevant to your life, as a college student it is because so many people are overdosing or struggling with addiction, even if you can’t see it,” said Martin. “As a UMD community we need to stand together and do what we can to prevent this epidemic from spreading and keep our community safe.”
Featured Image: The University Health Center on Oct. 5, 2022 in College Park, Maryland. Photo by Olivia Borgula.