This week, Baltimore Fishbowl reported on OSI-Baltimore’s grant to the Baltimore City Health Department to purchase testing strips that detect the presence of fentanyl in street-purchased drugs, distribute them at mobile syringe and needle exchanges, and study their effectiveness at reducing overdoses in the region. The Board of Estimates was scheduled to review the expense this week.
As mentioned in the Baltimore Fishbowl article, Open Society Institute provided funding to the Health Department for the purchase of the strips. OSI’s Addiction and Health Equity Program has worked with the Health Department for more than a decade to combat the rising opioid epidemic in Baltimore, first by partnering to establish an overdose prevention program to train opioid users, to more recently supporting a program to train emergency department personal to divert those with substance use disorders to long-term treatment facilities.
