Seattle Police Department – 2016 Naloxone Evaluation Conducted under contract by the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute University of Washington Caleb Banta-Green PhD MPH MSW Principal Research Scientist, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute Affiliate Associate Professor, School of Public Health
[email protected] & John Haight MPHc Graduate student, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON Submitted March 31, 2017 UNIVERSITY of WASHINGTON Alcohol & Drug Abuse ADAI Institute Acknowledgements: The study was funded by the Seattle Police Department, however, they did not have editorial influence on the report and the findings are solely those of the authors. We would like to thank Officer Steve Redmond and Peggy Miller from the Seattle Police Department for their assistance throughout the project and the officers who participated in interviews. We would also like the thank Dr. Michael Sayre, Captain Jonathan Larsen, and Michelle Olsufka from the Seattle Fire Department for their cooperation, advice, and help with locating incident reports and conducting data linkages. Seattle Police Department Naloxone Evaluation – Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute, University of Washington Page 1 of 44 Executive Summary Background Opioid-related fatalities continue to be public health crisis, with 229 drug-caused deaths involving opioids occurring in King County in 2015 (1), and 28,647 opioid-caused deaths nationally in 2014 (2). In an effort to fight the opioid epidemic the White House announced a $1.1 billion proposal which included $11 million dollars specifically for expanding naloxone to first responders in 2016 (3). The White House’s 2013 Drug Strategy recommended greater naloxone availability, with an emphasis on first responders, in particular police, with an example of the Quincy Police Department’s naloxone program (4).