One of the outcomes of the DruGS team’s Australian Research Council-funded project on overdose prevention and take-home naloxone is a collection of Overdoselifesavers.org resources, including keyrings with backing cards explaining how to respond to an opioid overdose, and USB drives containing the project’s report and recommendations for future overdose policy and practice.

Over the last month or so, the team have been distributing these resources to alcohol and other drug-related organisations across Australia, and are thrilled with the feedback. One organisation has told us, for example, that the Overdoselifesavers.org keyrings and backing cards have been distributed with naloxone, and proven a ‘great add on [to] overdose prevention training’.

Perhaps most importantly, the team were happy to hear that these resources have been especially popular among service users. One pharmacotherapy centre in Sydney reported that the keyrings had ‘disappeared quickly’, while a Queensland-based service informed us that clients ‘have been loving’ them. Another mentioned that many clients were taking extras to give out to friends. As a program manager from a busy Melbourne NSP explained,

Resources that clearly articulate and communicate that [people who access naloxone] are in fact ‘life savers’, equal in language to our universally agreed community life savers such as paramedics, police, doctors, surf-life savers and such, certainly reduces stigma, and reinforces their value (and the value of the people they are saving) within our community.

While the DruGS team have now distributed all the overdose response keyrings and backing cards, we still have a number of Overdoselifesavers.org postcards and posters available at no cost for relevant services or individuals affected by opioid overdose. If you are interested in any of these resources, we encourage you to email Adrian to place an order (a.farrugia@latrobe.edu.au).