A mailbox hanging from a tree in front of a house at 91 Elm St. isn’t enormous, but it carries tremendous power: the ability to save a life.
A person who lives in the home had contacted Dean O’Gorman of the Healing Hearts Collaborative and volunteered to do a daily check of the pouch to make certain the naloxone inside – which blocks an opioid overdose – isn’t missing or frozen, and hasn’t been vandalized.
The naloxone in the pouch on Elm Street – just east of downtown Cortland – is the latest in Cortland County. But the need remains in Cortland, and around the county, O’Gorman said.
O’Gorman’s organization has placed naloxone doses at locations including, in Cortland:
• The Wishing Wellness Center, 24 Church St.
• The office of the Econo Lodge, 10 Church St.
• On the side of Hair Studio 90, 2 Union St.
You can find others outside the fire stations in Truxton, Preble and Cincinnatus, and outside Gordie’s Appliance Repair in Virgil.
DANGERS ARE REAL
Since Jan. 1, 2024, TLC Emergency Services in Cortland answered 118 calls involving drug overdoses, said Trish Hansen, Cortland Division manager for TLC. Some of those were calls in which police or fire personnel had administered naloxone, but in 43 cases, a TLC ambulance worker administered the life-saving drug.
State data showed medics administered naloxone 37 times in Cortland County, police did so 27 times. But the vast majority of administrations, 2,668, came from organizations like the one that posts the naloxone kiosks.
“We highly recommend naloxone,” Hansen said of the boxes on Elm Street and around the community where the drug is stored. “It really does save lives.”
That’s helpful, she said, because there’s no profile of the typical person in Cortland and the communities – Cortlandville, Homer, McLean, Preble, Truxton and Virgil – served by TLC who will experience a drug overdose. Hansen said she had reviewed on Friday an ambulance call where the person who had overdosed was 60 years old, but said she has heard of persons as young as their teens overdosing.
As to where else in the community it would be beneficial to store naloxone, she said, there’s no simple answer. “It can happen in any neighborhood around here.”
‘IT COULD HAVE SAVED HIS LIFE’
O’Gorman understands the dangers of opioid use. In 2017, he recalls receiving an early-morning phone call that his son, Spencer, had overdosed on opioids.
Naloxone wasn’t administered in time.
“I did not know he was in need of help,” his father said. “I had no idea he was using.”
Since then, he made it his mission to learn all he could about opioids and opioid deaths. He works today to make naloxone available to opioid users, and emergency responders.
“If (naloxone) was given to my son initially,” his father said, “it could have saved his life. I’m not saying that’s a guarantee, but it could have.”
O’Gorman says now, eight years after Spencer died, his role is to be a “harm-reduction specialist” He works for Healing Hearts Collaborative, where he trains people to administer naloxone if they exhibit the symptoms of an opioid overdose. He has also worked with a partner organization, the Southern Tier AIDS Program.
The collaborative is a Cortland-based Community Opioid Overdose Prevention Program, offering training in overdose response, supplying naloxone kits and harm-reduction education across Central New York.
O’Gorman says he’s following on the path of a collaborative founded by Kevin Donovan, who launched the organization in 2018 after he was saved from overdosing on opioids. Donovan died of overdose in 2019, at the age of 40.
WHERE NALOXONE IS AVAILABLE
O’Gorman said that, with the help of the Cortland County Health Department, the county has been making naloxone available; the first location where it was accessible to the public was in front of the Truxton firehouse.
The firehouse locations are N-PODS, or Naloxone Points of Distribution. Truxton’s is displayed at eye-level on the outside of the firehouse on Route 13. So is Preble’s.
The collaborative has distributed more than 1,400 kits across Central New York.
O’Gorman said he’s thrilled that such locations have offered to become N-POD locations, but believes offers from a lot more businesses – and households, like the one on Elm Street – would be welcome.
“Data clearly shows naloxone is clearly in need in rural areas,” he said. “But at this point in our world, I believe everybody would benefit. I’d go wherever I was needed, just to get Narcan out there.”
Cortland County saw 366 admissions to opioid treatment programs in 2023, show preliminary data from the state Health Department. That’s up from 252 admissions in 2022 and 256 in 2020, but down from 488 in 2019.
But with the rise in the number of treatment program admissions comes a decline in overdose deaths and hospital emergency room visits. State data show nine deaths in 2023, down from 10 in 2022 and 16 in 2021. Emergency room visits are more stable: 34 in 2023, 36 in 2022 and 39 in 2021.
Deaths linked to fentanyl, an opioid painkiller, continue to climb in New York. It increased by a factor of 12 from 2010 through 2019, state statistics show.
