DENVER — Every week, Rica Rodriguez and other volunteers with Promotores de Esperanza are doing life-saving work.
"We are refilling our Narcan display case," Rodriguez said about one of the several free community overdose reversal drug cases the group has set up. "Just the fact that we fill this with 22 doses and that goes by the end of the week speaks volumes to how much it is definitely needed in our community."
City and County of Denver officials said overdose deaths went up 32% between 2022 and 2023. A disproportionate number of those deaths impacted the African-American community (16.4%), the Native American Community (2.7%) and those experiencing homelessness (27.4%).
"It's a taboo subject within the Black and Brown communities and sometimes you just don't talk about it, and if you, don't say there's a problem, then the problem is not there," Rodriguez said.
She remembers how hard it can be to ask for help.
"I was actively addicted to opioids and overdosed from opioids," she said.
The help she received to battle addiction is what inspired her to create her advocacy organization.
"We do overdose awareness, education and prevention by educating all of these communities in English and in Spanish," Rodriguez said. "If you can relate to somebody, you'll be more likely to sit down and talk to that person, rather than if it's somebody who has blonde hair and blue eyes and you really don't relate to. It can make the conversation much more easier."
Denver
Denver sees record number of drug overdose deaths in 2023
Promotores de Esperanza, Blazing Cloud Consulting and Roux Black Consulting are some of the public health organizations that were awarded a portion of a $9-million grant the City and County of Denver received from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"We're making sure we're culturally responsive and getting the communities that we know are most likely to be at risk. We see overrepresentation of our Native and Indigenous communities here, of our Black communities, of our Latino communities. We are honored to have community partners who know exactly how to reach, communicate and support those populations," said Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.
The grant will be paid out over five years, with a yearly award of $1,807,494. About half of that will go toward the community groups.
The other half will fund data collection in an effort to better inform city strategies to reduce overdoses.
"We will be able to collect more robust data about overdose and overdose deaths. We will partner with harm reduction providers to monitor and test the illicit substance supply in our community," said Karin McGowan, Executive Director of DDPHE, "For example, if the supply shifts away from fentanyl, naloxone is an overdose prevention will not be as useful as a strategy as it is now."
"There's data that exists in the ER, there's data that exists in the medical examiner, unfortunately, there's data that exists all across community partners that we really want to bring together and be able to understand so that we can make informed decisions about how we're actually tackling this," said Tristan Sanders, Director of Community and Behavioral Health.
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