Baltimore church hosts naloxone tutorial with health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen (Batlimore Sun)

Sunday Mar 18th, 2018

Deborah Woolford walked to the front of Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in Baltimore on Sunday and rolled up her sleeve to learn firsthand how to treat someone overdosing on opioids.

The 61-year-old Old Goucher woman and another volunteer obliged Dr. Leana S. Wen, Baltimore’s health commissioner, as she demonstrated to the congregation the two ways of administering naloxone, the emergency, overdose-reversing drug known as Narcan.

“When we have an epidemic — when there are 700 people in our city who are dying — you don’t know whose life you could be saving next,” Wen said. “It could be someone you pass on the street, it could be a colleague, it could be a family member.”

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When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

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