Mayor Bowser Releases LIVE.LONG.DC., the District’s Plan to End the Opioid Epidemic

By Sean Barry

As opioid related deaths continue to rise across the nation, Washington, DC, has also experienced an alarming increase in fatal opioid overdoses.. However, Washington, DC’s epidemic is much different than what’s been seen nationally. Here, it is more often rooted in long-time heroin addiction than prescription painkillers, and older African-American men are the demographic most affected.

It is against this backdrop that Mayor Bowser and the Department of Behavioral Health this week released LIVE.LONG.DC., the District’s strategic plan to reduce opioid use and misuse and to reduce opioid-related deaths by 50 percent by 2020. The plan is premised on our strong belief that any preventable opioid-related death is one death too many — and that too many of our neighbors in Washington, DC, have lost a family member to opioid use disorder, already.

The Plan reflects the input of a cross-section of public and private partners, including DC Government agencies, hospital leaders, physicians, substance use disorder treatment providers, community-based services providers, federal partners, and individuals in recovery.

We’re excited to have real resources to move progress on our strategies, starting with $21 million available through the State Opioid Response (SOR) grant, from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). This grant, which also includes a second federal fiscal year installment, will help us to:

• increase access to medication-assisted treatment, which combines behavioral therapy and medications to treat opioid use disorders;
• reduce unmet treatment needs; and
• lower opioid overdose related deaths through the provision of prevention, treatment, and recovery activities, including for heroin, illicit fentanyl and fentanyl analogs, and prescription opioids.

The plan enables us to continue momentum in a number of areas. Through our naloxone pilot program, the District distributes approximately naloxone 400 kits per month, with more than 700 overdoes reversed as a result of the kits. Through our Prescription Drug Overdose Data Driven Initiative, we raise awareness about the addictiveness of prescription opioids, actively monitor prescription drug overdoses and tailor responses based on the most recent trends. Our public education campaigns target older Washingtonians most likely to overdose on heroin. The DC Needle Exchange Program has prevented the spread of HIV through more than 500,000 clean needle exchanges.

We will remain relentless in seeking the best possible tools and data to stop preventable overdose and death.

Check out the Mayor’s announcement here and the full plan here.

Sean Barry is the communications director for the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services.