Death of drug overdose Almost 60% fell by 2024 among the black Bostonians, stopping an increase in mortality for years.
A broader adoption of Damage Reduction The strategies and outreach workers who strive to reach the inacimony were the reasons for Lifesaving’s life change of life, Shanna Person-Johnson told a recent morning at the Codman Square Health Center in Dorchester, where she works as the Commitment Coordinator of the Substance Community.
“Bots on the ground,” he said. “People entering the trenches behind WalGarens, opening the broken fences because they know there is a camp right there. Have conversations with people and leave them.”
The numbers show a significant reversal of recent years. Massachusetts and the country as a whole have praised falls into deaths of white people’s overdose -A relief expected in an evolving opioid crisis for decades. However, a different story has been deployed for black communities.
By 2023, Massachusetts’ black men and women had the highest rates of opioid -related deaths, compared to a 16% fall in the mortality rate of white men.
Larger black men have been especially affected by the epidemic in recent years. According to a Boston Globe analysis Of the death records, the fatal overdose rate among black men over 55 increased by 242% between 2017 and 2023 throughout Spain.
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But the numbers of 2024, Posted last month by Boston Public Health CommissionThey were different. They showed a decrease of 59% of the mortality related to opioids for black men and a 58% decrease for black residents in general.
In 2023, 104 black Bostonians died from a drug overdose. Last year, the number was 44.
The fall of a year deserves recognition, said Person-Johnson, but “our black, indigenous and Latin populations continue to fight”.
No one knows more than Lois Frazier. In 2022, one of his children died from a drug overdose: the combination of cocaine and fentanil that is becoming more and more lived. A second child lives on the streets of Boston, sleeping at MBTA stations or parking garages, drug addicts.
Lois Frazier lost one of his children to a drug overdose, and a second is addicted to drugs and lives on the streets of Boston.Hadley Children’s Dollars
Frazier, who is in recovery, is actively reviewed to ensure that he is still “breathing”. He has attempted countless ways to help him over the years.
The disproportionate impacts of the drug crisis have the roots for centuries that were found through the oppression of the United States to black people, Frazier said, through slavery, segregation and other policies.
“The system has brought us to this,” he said.
The approach to black communities
Dramatic plumes in number for a period of one year, according to community health workers, means that the city and its partners go to the right direction with a damage reduction approach.
Damage Reduction It is a public health goal aimed at empowering people who use drugs to minimize negative impacts. Damage reduction tools include naloxona antidote opioid, test strips that detect the presence of Fentanil in other syringe exchange substances and programs that reduce the propagation of blood -transmitted diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C.
Simultaneously, the decrease in deaths is only one year of data: a lot of work is left to stop the disproportionate damage of opioids and other drugs in black communities.
Due to historical and structural racism, the neighborhood and race of someone may mean that they are predisposed to drugs and have more difficulty accessing services, said Michael Curry, president of the Health Centers of the Massachusetts Community Health Centers.
And because the stigma can be more prevalent between certain populations, a culturally competent and empathetic care is needed to create confidence.
“We can do it, but it cannot be done in isolation,” said Curry. “It must be done with intentionality and a sense of emergency with the most affected by forming the strategy.”
Michael Curry is the president of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers.Courtesy
Addiction can become generational (a behavior learned) If a person grows up between her, said Person-Johnson. To fulfill that in black communities it is what sees a hesitation to “ask for help” with personal struggles.
“The black population does not consider mental health as mental health,” said Person-Johnson. “We have just dealt with it and it is definitely a complicated effect. This is what we have to get rid of, to say that it is good for our black men to see a therapist. It’s okay for black men to cry. It’s okay for black men to say,” I need help. “”
Dr. Devin Cromartie Bodrick, a The Boston Medical Center psychiatrist and the first lady of the twelfth Baptist Church of Roxbury said simply “medicalizing (addiction)” is not enough when working with black communities.
The outreach needs include the social determinants of health, said and holistic, the things as simple as the basic needs of hygiene and as complex as housing.
“We are much more likely to take care of people and people keep attention when they know that they take care of their entire personality,” said Cromartie Bodrick.
Dr. Devin Cromartie Bodrick is a psychiatrist at the Boston Medical Center and the first lady of the twelfth Baptist Church of Roxbury.Courtesy
What works in Boston?
It Attributes of the Boston Public Health Commission The decrease in overdose deaths last year to “distribute Naloxona, to extend access to treatment, associate with medical services, provide damage reduction services, offer housing and stabilization and relate to the community.”
In practice, it seemed like:
- More than 23,000 doses of Naloxona distributed through street dissemination, public health sales machines, kiosks and community subsidies
- The public health commission’s outreach team made more than 25,000 commitments with people and made more than 2,000 treatment sites
- Boston Healthcare for homeless set up a medical clinic within the Public Health Commission Recovery Services building, registering more than 2,700 patients visits since June 2024
- Federal funds were used to put substance use browsers within community health centers in the city
Curry said 90% of Massachusetts Community Health Centers now have an office addiction treatment, which he described as “complete models that really help guide patients throughout the continued care”, including behavioral health services, recovery training, street dissemination, damage reduction and links to detoxification centers and support housing.
There are 27 community health centers in Boston, some of which have several locations.
“Boston attracted health centers to be at the tip of the spear to respond to this crisis,” Curry said.
The city used the financing of diseases control and prevention centers to connect more patients from the Community Health Center with addiction treatment through the implementation of substance use navigators.
“Community health centers have shown great progress in which people have suppliers and employees who can meet their needs and connect them to services,” said Curry. “The result is less dead.”
Dr. Marjorie Janvier, a medical manager of UPHAM Community Care in Dorchester, said in a statement that adding a substance use browser and a dedicated nurse “has been a change of game”.
The city has also integrated housing media into its planning for substance use.
Over the last three years, new programs designed to stabilize and host people who experience a substance consumption disorder have served about 850 individuals. More than 270 have been placed in long -term permanent homes.
“This is the wrap we know saves lives,” Curry said.
Boston Medical Center is He is currently working on a pilot program with two churches in Roxbury and Milton To help black churches navigate mental health, with a specific approach to race -based trauma.
Cromartie Bodrick said that the program is an example of meeting people where they are and integrate partners who have already created a confidence base within the black community.
“Whenever he attracts spiritual aspects in this, he can really illuminate it for people,” he said. “There have already been studies that make up spirituality, if it is relevant to the population we are talking about, it can increase their effectiveness. It can overload the results.”
“Meet -where you are”
Person-Johnson cited the persistent “struggle” of street dissemination workers as something that is breaking down barriers to the city: people who represent the reduction of damage to the frontal lines in a respectful and non-judicial manner.
As part of his work at Codman Square Health Center, he walks Dorchester almost every day, from Washington Street to Ashmont Station to Fields Corner, making personal connections with people who need it.
He recently had a breakthrough when the small washes he handed over to the homeless, and sex workers encountered overwhelming estimate.
Shanna Person-Johnson, an employee of the CODman Square Health Center, hurts to reduce the reduction of work to Dorchester, where he walks through the neighborhoods offering people to basic safety and healthcare supplies.Hadley Children’s Dollars
“To be able to have a person’s hand and say,” Hey, I don’t judge you. What can I help you with? “I find you where you are,” said Person-Johnson.
At the helm in this outreach work, he added, they are “many minorities that did not have the support of damage reduction” when they were in the lower decades.
However, many of them now have master’s degrees, ph.ds and have a license in their respective careers.
“These are the people who think they need to be recognized, not for recovery, but the fact that this may seem the recovery for our people,” said Person-Johnson. “People memorize the number of addictions, but what happens to our people who came out? This is what people have to see.”