News

Sep 09, 2023

D.C. vending machines to dispense Narcan, fentanyl test strips

The opioid antidote Narcan, fentanyl test strips, coronavirus test kits and male and female condoms are among the items that soon will be available at six free vending machines throughout the

The opioid antidote Narcan, fentanyl test strips, coronavirus test kits and male and female condoms are among the items that soon will be available at six free vending machines throughout the District, with the aim of reducing drug overdoses.

The District joins Las Vegas, Chicago, Cincinnati and Puerto Rico in deploying harm reduction vending machines to provide around-the-clock access to people who are homeless, vulnerable to opioid abuse or wary of contacting community services. In Europe, Denmark opened the first community-based harm reduction vending machines in 1987, followed by Norway. Today there are hundreds of such machines in at least seven countries on the continent.

Opioid-related fatal overdoses have increased dramatically in D.C. over the past eight years, with a record 448 deaths recorded in 2022 compared with 281 in 2019, according to a recent report from the chief medical examiner.

“One death is a death too many and harm reduction processes like the use of Narcan and fentanyl test strips is really essential. We have to keep people alive so that we can get them into recovery,” said Barbara J. Bazron, director of the city Department of Behavioral Health, who said overdoses are down about 2 percent this year.

She spoke to reporters Tuesday morning outside a Southwest Washington fire station, where a large black metal box resembling a typical snack or drink machine displayed lifesaving items such as personal biohazard disposable containers, hygiene kits and wound care kits.

Starting Monday, the machines will be stocked and operating at fire stations at 1101 Half St. SW, 101 Atlantic St. SE and 4260 Minnesota Ave. NE as well as at the Whitman-Walker Health clinic at 2301 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE. Two additional locations are yet to be determined.

Residents can call the number on the machines for a one-time code that they enter into the machine to dispense items. They also will receive instructions on how to register for ongoing access to the machines, said Angela Fulwood Wood, chief operating officer at the Family and Medical Counseling Service.

The nonprofit organization, which already runs a large-scale syringe exchange program through mobile units, will manage the fire station machines, which Fulwood Wood said will eventually dispense at-home HIV test kits. Honoring Individual Power and Strength (HIPS), a nonprofit organization that also offers syringe exchange and support services such as housing and substance use treatment, will operate the other three machines. Those machines will dispense syringes, officials said.

“The addition of the harm reduction vending machines to our program is another opportunity to provide D.C. residents with access to Narcan and other health and wellness products,” Fulwood Wood said at the news conference.

The $300,000 pilot program is paid for by a federal grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to end the HIV epidemic, said Sharon Lewis, interim director of DC Health.

In the four years since the District launched a campaign to reduce opioid deaths, the city and its partners have distributed 156,000 Naloxone kits, Bazron said. Last year more than 2,600 overdoses were reversed, she said.

Older Black men have borne the burden of the opioid crisis. The vast majority, 85 percent, of deaths since 2017 were among Black residents. Nearly three-quarters of overdoses occurred among adults 40 to 69 years old, and one-third of victims were in their 50s, according to the chief medical examiner.

Zach Kosinski, a Bloomberg fellow at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, who is part of a team that developed a tool kit for harm reduction in vending machines, said the approach is a cost-effective way to expand the reach of agencies — especially during the pandemic.

The machines also serve as a low-barrier entry point for people who may be hesitant to trust service providers, he said.

“First they go to a vending machine and get Narcan and they have a good experience with it. They find out that vending machine is sponsored by a syringe services program at the end of the block,” Kosinski said.

Similar programs have experienced pushback when the needs of neighboring businesses or intended users of the machines aren’t taken into account, Kosinski said.

In D.C., the machines are installed in neighborhoods severely affected by opioid-related fatal overdoses, which are most prevalent in medically underserved Wards 5, 7 and 8, data show.

Heroin overdoses are vanishing from D.C. The reason? Fentanyl.

Opioids include heroin, fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, morphine, prescription opioids and the general category of opiates.

Kosinski called the approach “a way to expand access to services not just as a result of the pandemic, but to address an area of need ... that’s existed for a really, really long time. So, frankly, they’re quite overdue.”