- NYC will open public well being merchandising machines to extend entry to overdose prevention and hurt discount provides.
- The initiative comes after the town reported its highest recorded variety of overdose deaths since 2000.
- Metropolis well being officers are at the moment accepting proposals from non-profits to put in the merchandising machines.
New York Metropolis well being officers are launching a pilot program for public well being merchandising machines (PHVM) to assist drug customers who’re “disproportionately burdened” by overdoses.
The non-profit Fund for Public Well being in New York opened a request for proposals in December to put in 10 PHVMs that dispense the anti-overdose drug naloxone, sterile syringes, and different hurt discount and wellness provides to drug customers in neighborhoods throughout the town.
Since 1999, greater than 1 million folks have died from deadly overdoses within the US, in line with a study from the National Center for Health Statistics and preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In New York Metropolis, 2,062 folks died from unintentional overdoses in 2020, the best price since reporting started in 2000, in line with data from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Black and Latino residents in neighborhoods with the best charges of poverty, together with South Bronx and East Harlem, reported essentially the most overdose deaths in 2020, the report discovered.
“Racial fairness doesn’t imply merely treating everybody equally, however fairly, allocating assets and companies in such a manner that explicitly addresses obstacles imposed by structural racism (i.e. insurance policies and institutional practices that perpetuate racial inequity) and White privilege,” the Fund for Public Well being in New York’s request for proposals learn.
The initiative is anticipated to price taxpayers $730,000, which is able to assist opioid overdose prevention packages set up the ten merchandising machines. The request for proposals names a number of potential neighborhoods to put the machines, together with South Bronx, East Harlem, Union Sq., and Brooklyn’s East New York.
PHVM packages have turn out to be an rising technique to fight high-barrier entry to well being and wellness provides, with profitable pilots in Europe, Canada, and Australia. New York is hoping to fashions its program on these at the moment operational in US cities like Las Vegas, Nevada, and Cincinnati, Ohio.
In November, New York additionally turned the primary metropolis within the US to permit supervised consumption websites for unlawful medication.
“Sadly, the overdose disaster is worsening,” Dr. Dave Chokshi, commissioner of the New York Metropolis Division of Well being and Psychological Hygiene told NPR in November, including that these websites had been designed to function long run. “That is one thing that we really feel deep conviction about and in addition a way of urgency to deal with.”
These kinds of packages could possibly be a “recreation changer,” head of Drug Coverage Alliance Kassandra Frederique instructed NPR.
Opioid overdose prevention methods stay controversial amongst officers and communities in New York.
Mayor Eric Adams and former Mayor Invoice de Blasio have additionally voiced assist for overdose prevention strategies. 4 of the town’s 5 district attorneys have echoed their assist for secure injection websites, according to the New York Times.
“I would be for these merchandising machines in the event that they promise to place them in Central Park, Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue — proper the place the wealthiest folks keep,” NYC Black Lives Matter chief Hawk Newsome instructed the New York Post. “Why ought to our youngsters need to stroll previous people who find themselves congregating round these machines and nowhere else.”
In the meantime, in different US cities the place these packages function, some native residents and legislation enforcement officers have encountered authorized challenges and voiced considerations that these packages may enhance drug use and crime, NPR reported.
“We ought to be discovering methods to take these folks and put them right into a rehabilitation program to allow them to overcome their habit and we will try to save their lives,” Staten Island Metropolis Councilman David Carr told the New York Post, calling the PHVM program “absurd.”
The deadline for PHVM proposals is January 20, and funding shall be introduced on January 31.
