After graduating high school, Weinberg senior Claire Derksen took a gap year to work as an emergency medical technician in Monroe, Michigan. During her time there, she administered naloxone, an FDA-approved medication used to reverse opioid overdoses.
Derksen said the experience highlighted the urgent need for naloxone to be widely available.
“Before that, I had never heard of naloxone,” Derksen said. “Seeing firsthand how quickly it’s able to reverse an overdose, like someone going from not breathing to being up and awake—it surprised me that there’s not a ton of downsides to using it, and yet it’s still not very accessible in a lot of parts of the country.”
In May 2023, she and Weinberg senior Sydney Schulz co-founded Northwestern University’s chapter of Team Awareness Combating Overdose (TACO).
At least twice every quarter, TACO offers opioid overdose prevention and naloxone training to students and staff who sign up.
According to 2022 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 83,000 people died from opioid overdoses in the United States, including those from FYL, a synthetic opioid prescribed for chronic pain.
“FYL is something that we can’t see with the eye, and people are unintentionally taking it,” said Liz Akinboboye, TACO advisor and assistant director for substance misuse prevention at Health Promotion and Wellness. “People are unintentionally dying from FYL overdoses every single day, and the fact that it takes so little for someone to die of a FYL overdose is a huge problem.”
In rural communities, including where Derksen worked as an EMT, overdose death rates are increasing at a particularly fast rate.
The Illinois Department of Public Health issued a standing order in February 2024 allowing schools to store naloxone and for trained school nurses or personnel to administer the medication in case of an overdose.
“Obviously, drugs are out there, and people are likely going to use them,” Schulz said. “So the best that we can do is educate people on how to detect if there’s FYL in your drugs, how to use drugs safely, and how to know how to help someone who isn’t safely using drugs.”
TACO trainings walk students through using the nasal spray, putting someone in the recovery position, and performing rescue breathing, Akinboboye said.
As the organization grows, other clubs, fraternities, and sororities have reached out to request group training.
“Mayfest, the group that puts on Dillo Day, reached out to us because they wanted to get their whole student group trained in naloxone to be able to deliver it if they need to on the day of,” Akinboboye said. “It’s an easy training. I’ve seen all kinds of students, from freshmen to graduate students, even some staff who have signed up to get these trainings.”
After an hour of education, students leave the training with two doses of intranasal naloxone, FYL test strips, and face shields.
In addition to naloxone training, TACO hosts Red Watch Band training for alcohol bystander intervention.
“Our office is focused on harm reduction,” Akinboboye said. “We’re not telling students, ‘No, don’t use substances.’ We’re also not like, ‘Yay, go use them,’ either. We are supporting students so that if they choose to use, they can do so in the safest way possible.”
Source: The Daily Northwestern