Advocates push to make naloxone publicly available at Kennedy Plaza
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WJAR) — It's busy at Kennedy Plaza, every day. And it's a place of real concern for those fighting the war on opioids.
"Year after year, Kennedy Plaza has the most concentrated rates of overdoses in the whole state," said Haley McKee.
McKee knows this all too well. Not only is she a survivor of an overdose herself, she saved someone here.
"So, I ran screaming out of the restroom," McKee said.
A woman was overdosing in the bathroom. Haley had just given out her whole supply of naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan. That's the drug that saves lives by rapidly reversing an opioid overdose.
"Thankfully, somebody in the building had one dose," McKee said.
McKee said if it wasn't for the drug, it would have been a different outcome.
"Oh, absolutely," McKee said.
Right now, there is no Narcan publicly available at Kennedy Plaza.
McKee, along with others, are advocating for improvements. Since a rally last month, she was hoping change would be on the way.
"It would be nice to see RIPTA take some of our tools that we're offering, mainly Nalox Boxes, in their restrooms that would be of no cost to them. We have a surplus of Narcan in our state, fortunately, because of the opioids settlements funds. We're trying to reach a saturation level. There are harm reduction vending machines that people in our community can benefit from who frequent Kennedy Plaza that are also in other parts of the city. Again, we have those at to no cost to RIPTA," McKee said.
McKee said harm reduction services on buses would also be good. There are nonprofit outreach workers in the plaza, but not 24/7.
She said RIPTA continues to be unresponsive.
RIPTA held a stakeholders meeting Monday and said it is discussing voluntary Narcan training for RIPTA staff, but before moving forward they will be "identifying locations where sharp containers could safely be placed. They will also be looking for potential places where Narcan could be housed/placed around the Kennedy Plaza area. Our partner agencies will be working on a regular cleaning schedule of needles both in Kennedy Plaza and the park."
Kevin Monteiro, another advocate, said this should be of great concern to everyone.
"RIPTA transports every day thousands of people throughout the city," Monteiro said. "So what I'm saying is that it's very important that if you care about your customers and and you care about your riders, you don't know who on your bus can have an overdose at any given time."
"We're not selling this," he said. "This is something that is very important for our society."
McKee, now in recovery, is alive because of Narcan, and she wants others struggling with an opioid use disorder to have the same opportunity she had.