More towns across Franklin County have started the process of installing outdoor naloxone cabinets to increase accessibility to the life-saving drug.

The Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG) through its Collaborative Public Health District (CPHD) started the Rural Communities Naloxone Cabinet Initiative in 2024 to get naloxone cabinets installed in the 15 towns represented in the district. Naloxone is the drug name for the medication that is branded as Narcan, which is used to reverse the impact of a opiate overdose. 

Forty-three cabinets have already been installed in towns and cities between Franklin and Worcester counties, including Greenfield, Montague, Orange and Athol through the Opioid Task Force of Franklin County and the North Quabbin Region from the Public Health Excellence Grant. Other organizations like Tapestry Health and the North Quabbin Community Coalition have played important roles in getting these cabinets installed and maintained across North Quabbin communities.

“There's been this great push toward understanding the importance of this as a life saving medicine,” Health Educator and Epidemiologist with FRCOG Maureen O’Reilly said. “The member boards of health of this health district … decided they also wanted to have the have cabinets up, and got some other grant funding to do that.”

FRCOG’s Director of Community Health Phoebe Walker explained that the task force and CPHD receive different types of funding from federal and state sources to supply the cabinets, so collaboration to understand where naloxone deficiencies are, and what funding is available to remediate the issue is important. 

“Public health doesn't have boundaries, but our day jobs do, so in working towards a lot of these efforts, it does have to be putting together puzzle pieces to achieve that result on the ground,” Walker said about the collaboration.

Debra McLaughin, coordinator at the Opioid Task Force, said the move for towns to install outdoor cabinets is an expansion of accessibility for a tool that can be used as a first aid tool.

“It's been really exciting to see how this effort has been embraced by our community to make this life-saving medication available, much in the same way that an EpiPen would be available or an AED device,” McLaughlin said.

McLaughin explained that overdose data is provided to the Opioid Task Force. A spike in overdose deaths occurred in 2021 related to opioids in Franklin County and Athol, and a reduction has been seen from 2022 and 2023 data. This data that can help inform them on what methods the organization can take to assist in overdose reduction through multiple methods. 

“We contribute [the reduction] to a variety of strategies, not just the blanketing of Narcan everywhere,” McLaughlin said. “Since we started actively pursuing the distribution of Narcan and the naloxone box strategy in the last year and a half, we've distributed nearly 3,500 kits in a three year period.”

Participating boards of health in the CPHD rural communities district including Monroe, Charlemont and Ashfield have approved the installation process with Colrain and Buckland anticipating approval in the coming weeks. On Aug. 21, Bernardston’s Selectboard approved outdoor naloxone cabinets to be installed, and Gill approved the installations at a Aug. 12 Selectboard meeting. 

Board of Health Chair Barbra Killeen spoke to the Bernardston Selectboard who offered their approval for Killeen to begin coordinating with Bernardston Fire and Police departments on where to place two outdoor cabinets for access on town property.

A Gill Selectboard meeting also approved the Board of Health to install two cabinets through an approved motion to sign a community host agreement for the cabinets. Randy Crochier is a member of the Gill Selectboard and a Regional Health Agent, and he explained that the cabinets are planned to be installed at a local business in Gill, and at Town Hall.

Crochier said the naloxone access is an access point to harm reduction within the c0mmunity, and can act as a destigmatizing force for the medicine itself. 

“Unfortunately, opioids are out there, fentanyl is out there, and you don't know who's going to be affected by it,” Crochier said. “This just gives a place where people can discreetly get to Narcan to have at their home if they need it without necessarily going through the stigma.” 

Crochier points out that naloxone is not exclusive to people struggling with an addiction either. It can be a resource for people using prescription opioids, for accidental intake of an opiate, or for fentanyl exposure. He feels it is an item that should be normalized as a tool that can be helpful for those who need it.

“I think we're trying to just normalize the fact that nobody would think twice about a fire alarm being in a business building, so let's try to normalize it a little bit,” Crochier said.

Information on what opioids are, how to identify an overdose and information on naloxone is available through the Opioid Task Force website at https://www.opioidtaskforce.org/get-information/. A Zoom information session on naloxone access will be hosted on Sept. 26 from 2 to 3 p.m. with representatives from the Opioid Task Force, CPHD, North Quabbin Community Coalition and Tapestry Health. Registration for the session is available here: HTTPS://TINYURL.COM/BDCN8HX3. 

Staff writer Erin Leigh-Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com.