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Opioid stats slightly down for June

Overdoses down from same time last year in Nashua

By Adam Urquhart - Staff Writer | Jul 8, 2018

NASHUA – The city saw a decrease in both opioid overdoses, both fatal and non-fatal, in June compared to a year ago.

As the first half of 2018 came to a close, Lt. Brian Kenney said there has been 149 overdoses from January 1 to the end of June, with 19 of those in June. So far this year, there have been 16 opioid-related overdoses resulting in fatalities, with two confirmed fatal overdoses in June. In June 2017, there were 24 opioid-related overdoses, with six of them being fatal.

With Nashua being down in both categories for June, Kenney said, “Any month we’re down is a good month for me.”

Nashua Safe Stations averaged 3.1 visits per day in June, and since the program launched on November 17, 2016, they have been accessed 1,894 times as of July 3.

Chris Stawasz, AMR regional director, said Safe Station visits were up compared to May, with three to five people a day coming through fire station doors each day of the week. He said May was slow for visits, but everyone is continuing to work really hard in this community effort of ending the opioid crisis.

“I think it’s plateaued, which is much better than previous years where it was increasing exponentially,” Stawasz said. “We aren’t seeing the year-over-year rise. I’ll take this as a win.”

He said with fatalities being down, it’s pretty encouraging. With statics slighty down, Lisa Vasquez, substance misuse prevention coordinator with the city of Nashua, said they’re just continuing to do what they’ve done in the past at the Division of Public

Health and Community Services, which is continuing to educate the community about what substance use disorder is, the language people should use when talking about it, the resources that are available in the community and their Syringe Service Alliance of the Nashua Area program.

“We are outreaching more people from that program, and some people are going into treatment that have participated in SSANA,” Vasquez said. “We talk to people about safe injections, and talk to people about preventing overdoses when they do engage in the SSANA program.”

As they continue making referrals to SUD treatment through the program, as a reminder she said the first time people engage in the program isn’t the best time to say stop using the program and seek out treatment. Instead, they strive toward building a relationship with the person where they’re able to talk more and more about the harms and risks of continued use.

“As people get more comfortable, they’re able to talk about their struggles and say, hey I’m ready,” Vasquez said.

She said you can’t have those sorts of conversations right off the bat with everyone, and that it does take a while for people to be able to trust enough to open up and have those talks about where they’re at in finding motivation to get treatment.

While SSANA continues to make a dent in the ongoing battle against opioid misuse, they’re just one of many facets in the community-wide fight.

“In addressing the opioid crisis from birth to the grave, we really need to have a holistic community view of SUD and how we can all mitigate this problem,” Vasquez said. “It’s not like it’s just your neighbors problem, or the people who use, it’s everyone’s problem.”

Adam Urquhart can be reached at 594-1206 or aurquhart@nashuatelegraph.com.

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