Professors play role in effort to prevent overdoses

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Rhode Island has one of the highest opioid overdose rates in the country. The University of Rhode Island’s College of Pharmacy is stepping up to reverse the trend.

Clinical Professor of Pharmacy Jeffrey Bratberg and Associate Clinical Professor of Pharmacy Kelly Orr have led efforts to make an anti-overdose drug more accessible to Rhode Islanders.

Until 2013, naloxone, also known as Narcan, was only in the hands of emergency medical professionals in Rhode Island and participants in a community-based effort called PONI (Preventing Overdose through Naloxone Intervention) – a pilot effort to train people at needle-exchange sites, drug-abuse treatment centers and homeless shelters in the use of naloxone.

But that changed after Bratberg and Orr collaborated with health professionals and government officials to create a statewide agreement that makes naloxone available without a prescription at Rhode Island pharmacies. Orr, as chair of the Rhode Island Board of Pharmacy, was instrumental in having the requirement for individual prescriptions for naloxone waived.

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“We have the greatest pharmacy-based access to naloxone here in Rhode Island,” Bratberg said, citing collaboration across the industry.

Bratberg, who has earned a national reputation as an expert promoting the widespread distribution of Narcan, was in a key position to advocate for an improved response in Rhode Island.

Because Rhode Island is one of several states with an overdose epidemic – a death rate of 17 per 100,000 people – health officials have focused attention on how to make the emergency drug naloxone easily available to the public, especially family and friends of people at risk for addiction.

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