St. Louis installed a Narcan distribution box Soulard Market on May 22, 2024, following community outreach efforts by the Behavioral Health Bureau. The box was installed near the main entrance of the market and stocked with several dozen boxes of Narcan.
Narcan (naloxone) is an over-the-counter drug that’s used to treat known or possible opioid overdose. Narcan comes as a nasal (nose) spray. Each container holds one dose of Narcan that’s sprayed into one nostril.
“We put out the first Narcan box outside 1520 Market Street, where our department is housed on May 30. Another is at City Hall,” Davis said.
The boxes are just the first to be installed around the city in the coming months. The Behavioral Health Bureau has developed a partnership with the St. Louis Public Library system to provide boxes in neighborhoods where the most overdose incidents have been documented.
“Providing access to Narcan is critical to our goal of reducing the number of lives lost to overdoses as we tackle substance abuse in our hardest-hit neighborhoods,” said Dr. Julie Gary, chief of the Behavioral Health Bureau.
“We will continue to develop and leverage community partnerships to address the mental health issues driving substance use disorders.”
Gary said collaborating with partners has enabled the bureau to implement not only the Narcan boxes, but other outreach programs as well.
“Soulard Market Manager Bob Ray was open and instrumental in making this happen for us and the community,” she said.
Aside from establishing locations where Narcan distribution boxes can be placed for community use, bureau staff also provide monthly training for City departments and community groups on its use.
Mission-motivated initiatives
Davis said the initiative is part of the bureau’s mission to meet people where they are and give them access to much-needed resources.
“We want the City of St. Louis to know that we are out here, and we’re dedicated to bringing health resources to communities where they’re most needed,” she said.
“We want our residents to have access to Narcan and know how to use it because it can and does save lives.”
In May, Behavioral Health Bureau staff were able to administer Narcan to three individuals who were exhibiting symptoms of an overdose near its office.
According to Davis, the department has put close to $2 million of funding back into the community to fund other businesses and community-based organizations.
This has been done while prioritizing where the needs of the greatest, which are in “Black and brown communities in North St. Louis, parts of the south and parts of South St. Louis.”
“We have a data-informed approach… [and] a monthly report we do around substance abuse and other metrics,” Davis said.
“We collect a lot of data and then we map out and use that to build strategic approaches to these things, so we have already mapped out where they will go besides city buildings and recreation centers.”
Davis said, “one death is too many.”
“We are being proactive about this [by] meeting people where they are. We know that something new can be intimidating to folks.”
The boxes come with instructions, but health department representatives are also available to train people who would like to know how to effectively use them.
“We’ve been training city employees for months…around this work, and I just think that it’s so important for people to know this is happening and to empower themselves to help members of the communities when the need arises,” Davis said.
Can you even imagine utilizing this? What an unbelievable thing it would be for a completely untrained person to assess that a stranger requires an emergency injection of anything AND THEN you place yourself physically near that individual (!!!!) and inject them with a drug you know absolutely nothing about, nothing about the possible reactions, nothing about what to do if it goes wrong. And on and on it goes. What person in their right mind would do such a thing?