\n<\/p>\n
Among US counties containing the nation\u2019s 10 largest cities, Cook county, Illinois \u2013 where Chicago is located \u2013 has seen the largest reduction in overdose deaths since the national peak of the crisis in 2023, by 37%, according to an exclusive Guardian analysis.<\/p>\n
Chicago has one of the most robust drug supply surveillance and overdose prevention response systems in the nation. Jenny Hua, medical director for the Chicago department of public health, hesitated to take full credit for the progress, explaining that many factors influencing overdose deaths are beyond any one health department\u2019s control. It\u2019s also easier to have a coordinated response in a big city, where people and resources are concentrated. Changes to the drug supply are also affecting regions differently.<\/p>\n
Hua said that in order to respond to the crisis, the city has adopted a \u201cmultifactorial approach to a multifactorial problem\u201d. Even libraries have become part of the city\u2019s arsenal in the fight against drug overdose deaths. Chicagoans can get free drug test strips at the city\u2019s public libraries \u2013 as well as naloxone nasal spray, which can reverse an opioid-induced overdose.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually visited every library to provide education, because the librarians are a source of information for the community,\u201d Hua said.<\/p>\n
Bar chart of the change in overdose deaths among the largest US counties<\/p>\n
Since 2023, Chicago has rapidly expanded its overdose surveillance, in part with funds from the Centers for Disease Control\u2019s overdose data to action program. According to Hua, this helped the department to build on the foundation already established by local organizations, such as the Chicago Recovery Alliance, which has provided sophisticated drug checking services for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cCredit where credit is due,\u201d Hua said. \u201cBefore the health department got involved, there was this grassroots effort to make sure that both users and low-level suppliers have a bit more insight into what they\u2019re consuming, because the drug supply has always been volatile, and in the past couple years it\u2019s been increasingly volatile.\u201d<\/p>\n
More recently, the city of Chicago acquired new mass spectrometers, the state of the art in drug checking, which can provide details on the purity of drugs and identify newer adulterants that might otherwise be overlooked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we test dope samples that contain upwards of 10 to 12 different components,\u201d Hua said. \u201cGetting that information to people really helps empower them \u2026 When you tell people that the quality of the thing you\u2019re purchasing is really shitty, that is actually a deterrent, believe it or not, that is a huge deterrent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thanks to this technology, Chicago has been able to respond to new adulterants quickly. It was the first place in the country to detect medetomidine, a powerful veterinary tranquilizer, in street drugs. The health department has also issued alerts about nitazenes \u2013 a more recent class of synthetic opioid that can be many times more potent than fentanyl.<\/p>\n
These adulterants might already be taking a hidden toll in other parts of the country. \u201cA lot of this stuff just isn\u2019t being tested for,\u201d said Jim Crotty, former deputy chief of staff at the US Drug Enforcement Administration. \u201cIt\u2019s a big blind spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Understanding what\u2019s in the drug supply is also critical for helping hospitals and emergency departments respond. It\u2019s not just about preventing fatal overdoses, but other kinds of health problems as well. The tranquilizer xylazine, another recent contaminant, can lead to painful skin wounds that do not easily heal. When emergency departments have up-to-date information about the drug supply, \u201cthey can get these patients out quicker because they know that they\u2019re treating something that they have an antidote for\u201d, Hua said.<\/p>\n
Hua and her team also use ambulance data to identify overdose spikes on a hyper-local level and respond to them quickly. \u201cYou need to constantly be looking at the data\u201d to figure out where and when to respond, Hua said. \u201cA general response does not work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Among US counties containing the nation\u2019s 10 largest cities, Cook county, Illinois \u2013 where Chicago is located \u2013 has seen the largest reduction in overdose deaths since the national peak of the crisis in 2023, by 37%, according to an exclusive Guardian analysis. Chicago has one of the most robust drug supply surveillance and overdose<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[6645,314,252,17035,6666,17077],"class_list":{"0":"post-28812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-deaths","10":"tag-drug","11":"tag-overdose","12":"tag-reducing","13":"tag-succeeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}