 Well, thank you all for coming. Small, well intimate turnout. But for those of you all who haven't met, I'm Olivia, and I'm the opioid overdose rescue box program coordinator, and also Maripura Vista. And we are here tonight in response basically to a non-flex project. I'm kind of going off script a little bit. Don't do this. I can talk to them. It's like, you don't have to resize it, I think. We are working to get these nalox boxes installed throughout central Vermont. They already exist in a couple locations in Vermont, but they would be the first in central Vermont here. And we put out a pre-survey to the community to gauge their interests, their questions about overdose, their questions about Narcan. Received a lot of feedback that people wanted more information, wanted more education around Narcan. Which is what the start of these trainings are about. There's a series of threes. We have two more in Barrie and Montpelier. And so we teamed up with Vermont Cares, which is Teresa over here, so I'm sure you all know. And they were going to do a little Narcan training. And then I was going to just talk a little bit more about the project. And yeah, that's like a little intro to why we're here. But thank you all for coming. And so I don't know what the best way to kind of go about if we want to just have a conversation about our experiences and you guys being out here tonight. Or like you said, Teresa, I don't necessarily want to preach the choir like we all are here for the same reason. But yeah. I guess I have a question. So my piece of this was going to be to share with community members who might not know how I recognize the signs of overdose or how to use Narcan and that kind of thing. But I know that you all know how to use Narcan. I don't need to do that. I believe that probably most of the people on the Zoom, I'm not sure. I just want to find out what folks need because I don't want to do a Narcan demonstration for folks that know how to use Narcan. And I'd love to, for me, I told Olivia and Eva and Javed, I have also a story that I wanted to be able to share this evening after I talked a little bit about how to use Narcan. And also we've done a lot of community events where we've had really intimate groups like this. And a lot of times we've turned them into really amazing, rich, deep conversations that we could really still get some really awesome work then. But here's a smaller intimate group. And so I'm here to support you all and whatever you need, answer questions you might have, talk about resources. So that's kind of, that's me. Oh, and I'm the executive director of Vermont Cares. So. Why don't you share your story? Yeah, open with the story. I think that's really important. And then, hi. Hi. Welcome. Let's sit with us. I'm here to get some photos around the back. All right. Thanks. You're welcome. Yeah. Maybe we need to do or not. You know what you're doing? Make sure you know what you're doing. Oh, God. I believe he was all over me. I guess we probably should at least share a little bit about who I am and who Vermont Cares is for folks that may not know that would be helpful probably also for folks on Zoom here. So Vermont Cares is one more part of the CDPC coalition, but we also are a statewide nonprofit organization that does HIV prevention and care and harm reduction. And so we operate syringe service programs around the state, one in Barrie, one in St. John's Barrie, one in Rutland, and then we have two mobile vans. So it was a pretty expansive program across 11 counties. I have been the executive director for just over a year, but I've worked for Vermont Cares for 11 years. I started at Vermont Cares as a case manager working with people who are living with HIV and sort of made my way up through the ranks to the executive director position. And I think the reason that I've stayed and been so committed to this work is, one, I'm a person who has recovered from really life-threatening chaotic drug use. And I've always wanted to be able to help other people. And recently, I've had a renewed sense of urgency to the work that we are all doing. And for the reason that we're all here is so important. We're here to learn how to save lives, right? The work that we all do with harm reduction in your fields, emergency service providers, medical providers, we all are here to save lives and to help people. And I live and breathe this, right? And I recently was in a situation at a little bar restaurant for an event with my family and someone experienced an overdose while I was there in the dining room. The worst thing ever I could ever imagine happened and that was I didn't have Narcan on me. Me, the person who talks about this every day, who has devoted the last decade of my life to this and genuinely really believe that everybody should have Narcan and access to Narcan. And I didn't have it. I do this work every day. I talk about this every day. It's around me all the time. I left home without it. And so I guess I really wanted to speak to people here tonight and say, I get it. Like, why would someone who doesn't do this and doesn't know anything about it hasn't impacted by it also be like, gosh, I need to have that medication on me at all times. New perspective. I then decided to just say, oh, my goodness, I wonder how many of my staff, who we also all do this work, is everyone carrying Narcan and ask the staff days later. And only one person had been carrying Narcan on them because we became complacent about this. And it's not going to happen to us, even in this field. What happened in that moment for me was there was a lot of people in this building and not one person had Narcan. And people were screaming, does anybody have Narcan? Please, somebody get Narcan. And I just, I kept looking through my purse even though I knew I didn't have it. And I just kept like dumping it out and I knew I didn't have it. And I felt so helpless and also so, so upset was super traumatic. Like probably nothing I've ever experienced before. And I realized then, and I've done a lot of these trainings and a lot of times community members, especially will say, I don't know about that. I'm nervous. What if I don't use it right? What if I get too close to this person? You know, they're nervous, they're scared. I don't blame them. Especially in a scenario where you may not know the person. And I realized in this moment when I went through this experience that it didn't matter if you knew how to use Narcan at all, if you just had it on your person and were able to give it to the people who were trying to help save this person's life, that's all you needed. And that feeling of helplessness when I knew I had a way that I could have helped in a different way will live with me for a very, very long time. But I'm using this as a way to really implore people to consider what it means just to carry it. Even if you don't know how to use it. If you're nervous, maybe, you know, you hear different there's all kinds of myths and stories about people when after they received Narcan, maybe they're gonna come out and be violent and come out swinging and, you know, all of these different things are, oh, you get too close. You might breathe in some fentanyl and overdose yourself. These are things that aren't true, but there's still things that are circulating out there in our communities and in our world. And then, of course, people are fearful. And I just wanna say you don't have to be scared to carry Narcan, you can save a life. And I'd rather have you be a little nervous to carry Narcan on your person than to have to experience watching somebody die in front of you. I've been waiting to be able to talk about this without crying and without breaking down. I appreciate you all. This is the first time I've told this story publicly, being very broad about it to protect people's privacy and just renewed a renewed urgency for me also. Not that it ever went away, but just a different perspective to have. We talk about the signs of overdose pretty nonchalantly. Actually, I realized, I didn't realize how nonchalantly until experiencing it firsthand. And I can almost, almost, yeah, I'm gonna stop there. Yeah. Thank you, Sharon. I mean, I think that's the reason we're here tonight and we're gonna meet other places that we need to have, this is a life-saving drug, but if it's not there, it doesn't save anyone's life. And we need to get it into the hands of people, not only that use drugs, people that are with people that use drugs, family members of people that use drugs, and the general public, because all it takes is one of these things to be there and you're right, you don't have to give it up now, Conrad, there are plenty of people that can and will, but it has to be there. That's such a powerful story to give you. Sorry, let me go. But we're gonna bring some good for that. We're gonna bring some good from that. That's right. And yes, yes. And I would like to say also, when EMS came, they did such a great job, and that felt really good too to see that interaction happen in this particular place in a really kind and compassionate way. So that was good too, yeah. So, yeah, what? I guess I'm gonna bring it back over to you, Melody. No, thank you for sharing that, again. I mean, yeah, I guess I could talk more about it. I don't think that's live. Sure. That'd be sort of a good piece to start. I'd love to see it. Sure. Do you want me to share it with you? Yeah, that would be great. I want to have one of these in every single business across the state. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, your story reminded me very much of probably the first person who landed as someone who coded in a public except, who maybe had seen the CPR course or had heard about CPR, but everyone around him is nervous to do it or you need an AED, someone please get an AED, I mean, it sounds like we're working on something that will be similar to that, which in turn will, I think down the road, we'll find that similar to the AEDs, we're gonna find people who are going to, we're gonna be saving lives by implementing these. So maybe that segues you to see. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. So, let's go through these slides and then we'll discuss where we're at. Okay, you can go to the next one. So I wanted to start with this graph, which is showing opioid related deaths over the past 10 years in the state of Vermont. So it's a statewide graph, but it's pretty jarring, just the drastic increase over the past 10 years. 2019, there was a little dip, but then it went right back up in 2020 due to the pandemic. And in 2021, there was 217 opioid related deaths. And we don't have the data yet from 2022, but they are set to surpass these numbers. And I just thought this was just a good visual for everyone to just really understand that it is an increasing issue for sure. And it's not going away. Getting Narcan. So we actually have Narcan here for everyone in person tonight who would like to take some, but these are also locations that you should be able to get Narcan from. In, there's other organizations, or let me backtrack it. There should be places where you can get personal Narcan. This is where you should be able to go and get those. There are other businesses and organizations that will have Narcan such as like a nurse's office and a school, having it behind a desk, things like that. But there isn't a broad system in place to have personal Narcan. And this is why it's so important to know where you can get it. And I know we had a brief conversation tonight about pharmacies and being able to get Narcan at pharmacies. I don't know if you wanted to say something about that, Matine, or I'm not sure that's okay. I'm sitting in for Matine tonight. So I was very happy to be asked to come. It's been a while since I got to come out with the community. So yes, pharmacies. This is a little, if it's been in a standing order for a very long time that you could go to a pharmacy without a prescription to get Narcan. And way back when this first came out, I know there was some secret shopper stuff done around that to see how are people, how are they really met at the pharmacy with these requests? And I know that Eva had maybe done some of her own as well prior to this. And I think it's been a real mixed bag. And I like to be pretty straightforward in the secret shopping that we've done and that we've heard of other people do. It's been difficult to actually get Narcan at a pharmacy. We've heard of pharmacists charging up to $295 for a single box of Narcan in one of our secret shopper experiences. Another one charged the exact price, $75, exactly what it was. But then also like the attitudes have been different towards how you're treated when you go in and ask for something extremely similar to the law of syringes, being able to be purchased without a prescription also from a pharmacist, but it's pharmacist choice. They can charge you what they want. They can say yes and they can treat you anyway that they want. So just for people that are considering doing that without a prescription, just to know that you may be met with a surprise, you might be surprised at how you're met. And this isn't across the board by any means. I don't want to stereotype pharmacies or pharmacists for treating people poorly. That's not what I'm doing. I just want to be really honest about what could happen. And you also may just go into a pharmacy and they immediately have that in stock. A lot of pharmacies are saying they don't have it in stock or just making it a little harder than it needs to be to access that day then. And we know that there is a law that requires you to receive a partner prescription for Narcan if you're prescribed opioid pain medications. And I believe that those prescriptions, the feedback I've heard on those, it's been much easier. If you go with the prescription because you're also picking up your prescription from your physician, those folks haven't had as many barriers and getting the Narcan. And this is some old stuff too from years ago, some newer stuff. But I try to just be as straightforward people as possible. Eve, I'd like to, I know you mentioned maybe you brought the standing order here so people needed it. Sometimes it's nice to have that with you. So in case the pharmacist is unaware of the law or the rule that you can provide that to them. But yeah, I hope that helps. No, that's great, good to know. Yeah, I'm glad you shared that with our pharmacies for sure. Thank you. And yeah, I can go to the next slide. So the Locksbox Project timeline. So I wanted to just give you all a little overview of what has been going on over the past couple of years. So in 2020, 31% of the overdoses that happened in the state of Vermont happened outside of the home. And you also saw for the past side just the drastic increase of overdoses in the state in general. So due to this is why a workgroup formed and our workgroup consists of partners from the very fire department, very police department, Vermont CARES, the Vermont Medical Center, EMS and many others. And they have worked with us to try to increase access of Narcan to visators and hopefully save lives. We learned about in the Locksboxes and thought that this could be a great initiative but we wanted to check in with the community. And that is why we conducted in the fall of November 2022 we conducted a survey. And the survey results were, we were able to create goals and understand the community a little bit more. And it sounded like a lot of people really were eager to get more education surrounding Naloxone and overdose. So that is partially why we're here tonight or mainly why we're here tonight. We have a series of three trainings. There's one more in Mount Piliar on Monday and then April 11th in Barrie. And we hope to launch off of those from installing some pilot locations for our Nalox boxes. Usually they're gonna be like at some of our partner locations and then broader installation around central Vermont is the goal. Yes, okay. And so as you saw on the timeline in November we did a survey and these are just some highlights that we wanted to touch upon that the survey brought us. So 248 people were able to complete the survey and we were able to reach people from Barrie, Mount Piliar, Waterbury, Matter of the Valley, Plainfield, Marshfield and East Mount Piliar. So there was a wide range of people who were able to answer. 76 people agree that having Narcan available in public places will help their community. 63 said they were not sure how to administer Narcan in the event of an overdose. And then 53% said that they do not know if they know the size and symptoms of an opioid overdose. And yeah, these are just some statistics that we thought were interesting from the survey and why we're here. Yeah, can I add to this? Please do, yeah. So I think what's really partening here is that the vast majority of people who took the survey feel like Narcan would benefit their communities because it's much easier to provide training and education than it is to sometimes change people's minds about what they think is a good or right idea. The reason that we're sort of taking this methodical approach to the Norsebox project is that working with some partners who were part of the Barry Sharps project many years ago. And I heard you came up with the logo, which is so nice. And so that project has a really nice toolkit that you can use to do exactly what we're doing now. And one of the things I think that's a little bit different that happened then is that there was more community resistant to the idea of sharps boxes going up. And so we spoke with Joan Reeve in the health department and she said, I'd really like it if you kind of did this sort of slower methodical public health approach. And so anyway, my point is that that's really heartening because we can work with that. I can work with 76% of people thinking that publicly available Narcan is a good idea. So thanks for letting me chime in, Joan. Yeah. Yeah. If I tell a quick story. Please do. I'm not recognizing the signs of overheats. Yeah, yeah. On that data point, it was just, and I actually was just telling Eva and Olivia this story earlier, but the 53% of people that didn't know how to recognize the signs of an overdose remind me of another story that I'd heard many, many years ago, had a training in Mount Holly and someone had gotten in this ties back to the pharmacy Narcan had had a family member who they were concerned about. So they went to the pharmacy and got Narcan through the pharmacy, but they didn't know anything about Narcan. They didn't know how to use it. They also didn't know how to recognize the signs of overdose. Their son was overdosing, but they didn't recognize the signs because no one had told them what to look for. And unfortunately he died while they were, had the Narcan out in the package, but didn't know if they should use it and weren't sure how or when to. And that story also has stayed with me this all of these years and how sad that was that just a little bit of education could have saved a life and they were ready to carry that. So yeah. The other specific that's not on here that's important is about 75% of respondents didn't know where to access Narcan in their communities. We should probably have that on here. And that's a really important piece of that previous slide and also this conflict behind the blocks boxes. Do you recall if there was a, which communities of respondents sort of felt this way? Do you see differences? If you recall, in Montilier versus Waterbury or, I think it might have been a while ago. Yeah. We didn't separate. I was just saying. I don't think people separate. Gotcha. What's how they're coming. Yeah. We made a conscious decision actually and the survey was five questions. It was those four questions and then you wanna tell us anything else. And we had to decide are we gonna ask more questions about where do you live and what's the zip code or some demographic information? And we decided not to. I think that might be partly why we got such a good response. So the public health data expert in me wishes so much. But it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So inside of a nalox box, there is a rescue breathing kit and a container of Narcan. As you can see, it's right next to a EED, but they resemble an EED box and other first aid kits and they provide quick access to Narcan in the event of an opioid overdose. And yeah, I know Eva, you mentioned this to me and I also agree. Like I really like this picture and just the sense where it's right next to an EED. It just shows how it's like very much. It's just as important, just as easy to install can be right there just like an EED is in every restaurant you go to pretty much every building you're in. There really isn't any reason that it can't also be there. So. One thing that's nice about co-locating them too is that my impression is that, is it fire has to know where EEDs are installed? And so I think that this is a nice pairing. It could be with a fire extinguisher or other sort of emergency supplies. One thing I just want to point out here is that in this picture, this box has an alarm here. Not all boxes have an alarm, but in this case, if this box was open, it would trigger the alarm and it would sound sort of an emergency signal. But the boxes that we have don't have that. And sometimes people point that out and wonder what the difference is, not what it is. Can I point out one more thing? Yeah, please do. This kit has one box of Narcan in it. I have seen pictures of communities that stuff it full of Narcan so that you don't have to worry about one dose or two doses being gone and taken from it. So there are different ways to do that. Yeah, so Nalox boxes are actually installed all over the country. And there's two locations, I believe too, that already have them in Vermont. And that is White River Junction and then the GE Aviation Facility in Rutland. And our project would be the first to bring them to central Vermont. And it really is just a community-based solution for what we have discussed as a nationwide epidemic. And we really think that if we treat, this would be a way to really educate and allow bystanders to save lives and really make a difference. So that's about it. That's it. On that last slide, where that's all there are in the whole U.S. Really? Wow. I mean, whoa, that's- There's actually a website, their website you can like, if you see one that's not on that map, you like type in where you saw it. And it's kind of like, I think a self-record types, but that is, yeah. I have a question, Eva. How can you obtain one of these outside of the central Vermont project? Did anybody purchase or obtain these boxes? How does that work? Yeah, you can go to www. I have Naloxbox.com, I don't know. They have a website. So it's super attainable. It's to anyone, I'm under the impression that anyone can order Naloxboxes. We get them from the UVM Center on Rural Addiction. They cost a couple of hundred dollars. And they do not come stocked with Narcan. So you and your community need to figure out how you will stock them, monitor them. Yeah. This is really great. Really, really great to know. I will, I, we will be purchasing some of these to put out in non-central Vermont areas. I think it's just really, really, it's really such a great, easy way to, like you said, to get this out there for people who aren't carrying it. And I think, because we are all gonna maybe forget to carry it on our person every now and again. And really awesome. Thank you all so much for your hard work on this project. It's really awesome. Yeah. Are excited for the pilot installations and then that will help us work through some of the processes and how do we, how often do we want to check them and how often are we checking in and that kind of thing. And then the next step will be putting them up and trying to make sure that their installation locations are data driven so that they're really making a difference, but also finding where there's readiness with partners to install them. So there's a little bit of a balance there. Yeah, I mean, I think this whole kit is amazing. I mean, after hearing your story, I'm just thinking about myself, like being an off-duty EMT in my community. You know, I mean, there are so many times like, when I leave work, I'm not carrying a first hand bag with me. You know, like I'm in plain clothes, I leave my car, I'm going to the ice center. If someone goes down in front of me, I can most likely rely on an AED, but if it's not a cardiac arrest and it's an overdose, I'm not carrying Narcan. I mean, that's on my work truck. Like that's on my ambulance, you know? So in seconds count, you know, someone is not breathing. They only have a few minutes until they start, you know, declining to the point where it's very severe for their health. So the stuff really matters. And, you know, you kind of touched on it. Like people have a negative look on Narcan. And some people have a negative look on Narcan. And it's hard to change their minds, but I have to imagine that there are people in the same, you know, outlook on people need an AED, you know, people who maybe are overweight and, you know, didn't take care of themselves if they collapse. It's like, well, at what point did they do it themselves? I mean, that's not fair. That's not our judgment. You know, it's our job. It's our job as people to help our community. I mean, if someone drops in front of me, I became an EMT because I care about my community. And I want to help, you know, the people that I've grown up around and I want to give, you know, my helping hand out to my community. And it doesn't matter what I'm using. People all have their own things. So it's my job to help the user and do a great job. So if you wanted to have a kid yourself, would he just be like any other person to get a kid or would EMTs be able to be provided a kid when they're off duty? So the intention is that it's installed on the wall somewhere. So if there was a place that it would be important for it to be installed, we could definitely work with you to make that happen. And then maybe we could talk about, you know, one of the really important pieces is how do we make sure that it's still, it's always as an arcane in it? Because the worst case scenario is that somebody goes to use it and it's empty. So like my, like what we're constantly thinking about and it's going to be different, I think with every place that it's installed is we have to have a really clear understanding of whose responsibility is it to check this and how often and do they know how to receive more Narcan and where does that Narcan come from? So that's why we're starting with two places we know very well. We're going to go with Turning Point, center of central Vermont and then the foundation house which is a new recovery residence opening in Barrie for women and women with children. So we'll start there and then sort of see how that goes before we go to, you know, broader. I wonder if you could figure out where there are AEDs around? I mean, I'm sure, you know, and that might be, maybe you guys have already thought of this, but like a starting point of people who are, or organizations like schools like that are willing to put up, have AEDs there. Maybe that would be a good, you know, that might be organizations who have a disposition to be public spirited in that way and might be willing to consider it. Yeah, that's exactly kind of our thought process. And initially, I think Rachel and I wrote a letter like over a year ago, because we were like, let's get it in every school in central Vermont. That's like what we wanted to start with. And we thought, oh, we'll just, that's exactly what we'll do, we'll put it next to AED. And then that's when we thought, okay, if we did this and parents said, why are you doing this? The project could die. And we said, we gotta do the survey and see where the community's at. Now I know the community wants this and now we can start doing it. But yes, absolutely. I mean, for schools, the school boards might be a good place to start. You know, it'd be interesting to see how people respond to it. The other thing is I feel like having these things around, and this is in my mind, an argument for having them in schools is that even just having them there raises awareness. Like people are like, what's that thing? Oh, wow, yeah, this is really, this is important enough that we're putting things all over the place, right? Not only raise awareness and also Olivia just sort of said this quietly, but it starts to work on the stigma issue, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think when it becomes a normalized piece of equipment like in a evening, and when it's positioned right next to an evening, which most people recognize now, they see that lightning ball, they know what it means. Right. It goes a long way to sort of making people aware that it serves the same purpose, right? For a different disease. Right. We did in that survey have some misconceptions in that sort of open response. People express some concerns that we made a handout to address them, but some of them included people, being concerned that you could use Narcan to get high. So that was one that we have on the sheet that this really has one purpose and it can't be used in that way. Yeah. So I think those are the kinds, in addition to the general awareness of what are the signs and symptoms of an overdose and how to use Narcan, I think there are some other important things that we still need to do education on. And just getting these out into the community. I mean, it's similar again, not to weed a dead horse here, but same with the AED. I mean, if you start putting those out in public places and people start realizing like, oh, I know this is here. I have no idea how to use it. Then there'll be a group of people who are also like, well, I see these boxes overdose emergency kits. I don't want to have to use it. Eventually there will be people requesting the trainings. And my hope is to see these go out in public, have people have questions and spike their curiosity. And I get to the point where having CPR trainings in the community is, I mean, we're having these like right beside them. That would be the hope. Well, at this point of the night, we were going, we had a pre-post assessment that we didn't do, but we were going to transition into like an open questions and answers section. And I didn't know if Java, if you had any words that you wanted to say or if you already did. But. No, so I'm Java Meshkuri. I work in Central Automatical Center Emergency Department. This is Dr. Ben Smith. He's the director of our emergency department. And we're both proponents of low barrier access to care. And care can mean a lot of different things. It can mean saving someone's life with Narcanic. It can mean having treatment available for people to try to see treatment. But most importantly, I think we both share the belief and that we need to be there for people to address what they want to do with their lives. And we were there to help them. And we have a lot of things that we can do to help them. And what I like about Narcan is that, it sort of signifies the rule of people taking care of themselves when they use drugs. And the first rule of getting help when you use drugs is what? Being alive. You gotta be alive or you can't get better or get help. So that's a really powerful piece. And I think the simple things for the public are how do you prevent overdose or some real simple things? We want people to avoid using alone, right? Because then people don't know your use, you can't get help. There's actually a neverusealone.com. It's a helpline that's got, you can go online or there's a number to 800-484-3731 where if you have the need to use and you're alone, someone stays on the line with you. They know where you are. And they can call for help. Sterile syringe programs are so important for people to have the right healthy, to stay healthy while they're gonna use. They need the right stuff. Hepatitis C, HIV, endocarditis are really significant problems for people who use drugs and we need to protect people so that doesn't happen. And then things like this, fentanyl test strips. Most people still don't think they're using that alone and we know what the makeup or drugs are. Plus there's all these other things that are, this is the synthetic wave of the opioid crisis now. There's just all kinds of things that people don't know and why they're putting themselves. So being able to test is really important. Using smaller amounts of drugs if you're gonna use them. Carrying Narcan, like we talked about all my, and then having people know the call line when we go up so you folks can get there and help them. That's what we're trying to do. And then if people come to our department and want help, if they wanna get into treatment, we can do that. We can start people on medications and we can link them in services. We're staff 24-7 with people with lived experience. They come in, they've been there before. They're an example of what happens when people wanna get help. It serves both not only to remind the people that are using drugs, but the people that take care of people are using drugs. This is what it can look like. So I think it's really important to have these kind of forums where we come together and talk about it. Even if we're talking amongst ourselves, this is equally as important. People may be able to see this another time. We're gonna do more of these. And you're gonna do more of these now that you signed up. So it's good. But it's really important. And it's exactly what you said. It's like, the fact that people use drugs has been going on for centuries, but it's not a family's problem. It's not Theresa's problem. It's not the hospital's problem. It's a community issue. And there's no way that we can do it in our little silos. I've been to work together with some community. So this is the crux of what it's about. There's little meetings like this that go a long way to get things done and get people to help them. That's all right. Thank you. Yeah, so I think we can really start wrapping up. Yeah. Does anybody have any more questions or comments? Hey there, I do. This is Alice Spurrito. Hi guys. Thank you so much for having this. And Theresa you did great. I appreciate that story. And I'm sorry you went through that. I actually kind of had a similar situation. I used to work at the hub in Berlin, the Methadone Clinic. And we very sadly lost a patient due to the family member not calling 911. So they used the Narcan, but the process was incomplete because they didn't understand where they were fearful of calling 911 for their family member. And they went back down under into being the overdose and then expired during the night. People went back to bed and it happened like a few hours later. So I have a couple of questions. And one of them was do you have a sense of the community having resistance to just like the visual public health education, like the signage that, I forget what the name of the agency is, the VDIC gave us at our meeting some beautiful posters for harm reduction, like never use a loan called 911. And I put some up and they were taken down the next day in downtown Berry. That was one question. If you feel like there's just so much resistance driven by misunderstanding or not enough information or whatever it's driven by. And then my other question sort of related is, so we're doing these nalox boxes now, which is really wonderfully presented like with the next to the AED machines. And I'm thinking about, oh, these are gonna be, before I came to this meeting, I was visualizing that they were, you're gonna be talking about the vending machines. The nalox on vending machines that are being put up at universities and whatnot. What does the community, like how, my question is, do you have a sense of, you're gonna go slow with the public health education and how much longer would we need to wait for those kinds of things to be put up in public areas, the vending machine? It might feel like overwhelming for some people who are resistant to it and I'm just curious what your guys's thoughts are on the vending machines and visual aid public health harm reduction information. Like what do we need to do in our community as proponents of harm reduction? What your thoughts are on that? I mean, I think you're right, Alice. I mean, when I think about the reason that those posters come down where there's pushback is because of the stigma around drug use. And I don't know, I think Teresa taught me. I mean, the way to combat stigma is through education. I mean, the more education we can do, the more this becomes acceptable practice. And I think that that's really important is that there should come a day where those posters don't come down. They should be everywhere. You walk into a library or they're there just like the choking ones, right? Back when people were learning the Heimlich language. It's all just something that has to be educated. And then when you get into things like Narcan distribution centers, if you have an organization like a university that can provide that. And again, provide the infrastructure of filling them when they're empty, educating students and people around it. It does take infrastructure. I mean, I think that we have a lot of great ideas but what I appreciate about this project is that Olivia and Eva realized when they started was that there was just a lot of misunderstanding and antiquated beliefs about all this. So they realized that by doing a survey, kind of seeing where the public's at, right? We have to meet the public where they're at too, right? Really gave a lot of information and then we can target education. And hopefully, things like this are really important. We have to keep doing them. We have to get out and know a lot of communities. It takes time and it takes people that wanna do it but I think clearly the interest is there. Great, thank you guys. Could I just chime in real quick on something here? Allison, I know a lot of us have been doing this work for a long time and I was just thinking back to the times before Nalox boxes were ever heard of before we were doing recorded community conversations where I was just going in just me, just with a box of Narcan and talking to the community restorative justice center and I was going to their residence houses and just doing quick and dirty, just like, this is what this does, this is how you use it. And I was giving them a box of Narcan to keep and with the first aid kit at the house. And the time of going to city council meetings where we were being voted no, you can't bring a syringe service program into our town. Those days have changed, right? And so I have so much, we're doing what we're doing right now is how to get to that place. And I just, I remember those days so well, fighting so hard to bring harm reduction services to places and we don't have to fight the hard anymore and we see how far we've come. It's just amazing. So have faith and hope where we're doing the right thing and where it's going to keep growing. So, but thanks for bringing it up. I thought I'd give a little boost of the old school. May I ask a quick question? I'm a, this has been helpful and I will go back and watch the video because unfortunately I couldn't start. Couldn't be here at the beginning, but on some levels I'm a little sad that there's not more people here. Actually on a lot of levels, I kind of expected a lot more people to be here and I don't know, just in terms of getting the word out and things, I wonder if something like farmer's markets where people might be more amenable, just even have like a, if they would let you do a booth, just like an information booth, like maybe near it or outside it, just something else is just more passive where people could just stop by and say, oh yeah, I'm interested. I never really knew more about that or if that's like a later phase of things because I think the more that it's normalized, as it already kind of is, but anyway, just I'm trying to think of other ways to get the word out. I mean, this seems pretty accessible. All I had to do was click a link, but clearly I think there's another step that people need to have in order to participate. They probably think, oh, it's a great idea and then that's it. So I guess my question is how, what else could people tangibly do to help get the word out about these things? Yeah, well, that's a good point that you're raising. And I think, and Rachel, before we got started, said we should go to the grocery store and do this, which is similar to the farmer's market idea, but I think that the point is it's always hard to bring the public here to us. It's asking a lot of the evening, people have kids, people have responsibilities. So I think we should get creative with how we can go meet people where they are and do it. It doesn't have to be an hour that you sit down. It can be shorter and easier than that. So it's a really good point. Even having a handout that you give people and saying here's a link to more information, here's the video for people if you wanna see what we've been doing recently, something like that, yeah. Absolutely, I feel like a lot of these recent questions are very related and I agree, Melissa, going into a variety of public places, like I was sort of kidding when I said the grocery store, but I'm not kidding. I mean, and I think similarly to the presence of an locksbox is the work that we're doing is by putting this out there in the community, we are saying people who use drugs exist and they have a right to be in these spaces and they have a right to be here, however they wish to be here and we want to provide what we can be, like providing to make sure they are safe or as safe as they wish to be. And so I think, like it sounds strange, but in a way, these boxes are almost aesthetically pleasing, right? They are not big, scary things. And I think it says to people like, folks have a right to be however they are and they have a right to be standing next to the cardiac patient too, right? Like these are all just ways humans show up and so we should be at the grocery store, we should be next to the AED, we should be in the home, we should be here in the library. So yeah, I think there's like Alice and Melissa's questions are very intertwined in that way, like we have to fight to show up, folks have to like fight to show up every day, no matter who you are or what your life is about. So if they take the posters down, we bring them back, we get a friend and we have our friend who are too, like we go to the pharmacy and we secret shop for the lungs and ourselves and when we get it, we give it to our neighbors, stuff like that. So yeah, I think it's also intertwined, but I think that yeah, you just continue to put it out there and give it the beauty that it deserves. So well said. I also love the idea of the farmer's market too. I could totally just see like, Waterbury, I feel like I saw I was born, you know, and at CBH and I've lived in Waterbury my whole life. I feel like I've gone to so many farmer's markets and I've run into so many people and just seen people have random booths and you learn a lot of, you know, weird, funny, cool things there and something like this, having someone go over it and then even just like an anonymous box where like here you can just select yes or no, like would you want this in the community and get a box of like, you know, now 50 people filled it out and they all said yes, like that's a good start. That's a pretty good group of people and I feel like people who go to the farmer's market are pretty prominent in this community. I mean, they're the ones that go there to support, you know, their neighbors, their friend who was up on stage playing the music at the event, the concert in the park after the farmers would have been, you know? I love that idea. I think that's a great idea. In my other hat that I wear is in suicide prevention and we're often at the farmer's market tabling and talk about a topic that people don't want to touch. But I talk to people constantly throughout my time there, just one after another coming up and talking and sharing and being open and asking questions. And so I think if we can do it with that very heavy sort of scary topic, I think we can certainly do it with this. Yeah, I love that because not only would you have this box to be talking about your community project, but you could also tap Vermont Cares and make sure you had the personal carry supply at that same table. You know, we could do that together so people could not only hear about this and when they see this box know what to do with it but they could also leave with their personal carry at the same time and get a quick little tutorial at the table how to use it. I think we could do so many things, right? Well, we're using this as a great launching point for the conversation too, because it's digestible. It makes sense. It's logical, people who aren't familiar with this can say, oh, yes, I've seen those AED boxes and really understand that because the bottom line is we're all humans and we naturally want to help other humans, like that's just inherently who we are as beings and I don't think it's that hard of a sell, but it does seem like, oh, would we go to the farmers market because of all that stigma that we've all been entrenched in for so, so, so, so long. I love it so much, such a great idea. Yeah, I love farmers market. I'm getting the word out about how easy it is to use this. I'm just listening to the conversation and wondering how many people actually know that, right? I mean, this is, I mean, AEDs are pretty simple to use, but even those are, you know, we gotta like open it up and you gotta look at the tech. I mean, this is so simple to say. So easy to save a life like this and it doesn't require a lot of training. You know, you put it in the nose, you push the button and, you know, most of the time that's gonna save your life and it's so easy to do that, right? Take the judgment out of it, but goodness gracious. When you think of each component of ZPR, it's like, I mean, you need to start your compressions, you're gonna replace the pads. I mean, and before that, yeah, you need to open it. Like there's so many things. And this is, yes, you open the package in the nose, push, push, push, push, push, push. Right, you're knocked by it and I got it right. Yeah. Yeah, basically, that's enough. Right. Yeah, I'm gonna turn it to somebody. And don't worry, I have personal care, you know, I can't hear for anybody that wants to take that with them before you go. We'll make sure that we get that for you. Yeah, Melissa, we would love to connect with you if you'd like to receive some of yourself. We can easily make that happen. That would be great. I would love to be part of it. Well, we're a little past 7.30. You wanna close this out? Yeah, yeah, thank you all for coming tonight. It was, I'm glad we were able to have this conversation and I hope that you all continue the awesome work you're doing and maybe our next trainings will have some more community members and so, yeah. So thank you all so much. Thank you guys. Thank you. Have a good work everybody. Bye. Thanks Alice. Thank you all. Thanks so much. Bye bye. Bye.