In an effort to prevent overdose deaths, the University of Southern Mississippi will be installing emergency kits containing Narcan in residence halls across its Hattiesburg campus.
Narcan, also known by its clinical name Naloxone, is a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose. Southern Miss is the first Mississippi college or university to make overdose emergency kits stocked with Narcan, instructions for use, and CPR masks available in campus housing.
The Moffitt Health Center initiative was made possible by a $43,000 grant from the Jimmy A. Payne Foundation. With the grant funding, Southern Miss purchased 50 overdose emergency kits to be mounted in residence halls and public common areas on campus.
The grant also provided funding for the purchase of 300 doses of Narcan – 50 of which will be available in the emergency kits, with the remaining 250 to be reserved for students who have undergone Narcan training. An additional 316 doses have been provided to the university through the Mississippi State Department of Health’s pharmacy for faculty and staff.
Narcan works as an opioid antagonist, attaching to opioid receptors, while reversing and blocking the effects of other opioids. Narcan can quickly restore normal breathing to a person if breathing has slowed or stopped because of an opioid overdose.
“As an emergency medicine physician, I see drug overdoses on a regular basis in the ER, but the volume of opioid overdoses in young adults has increased exponentially over the past few years with the surge of fentanyl being trafficked in communities across the USA,” Dr. Melissa Roberts, executive director of the Moffitt Health Center, said.
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“College is a time of exploration and experimentation for many young adults which often leads to high-risk behaviors. One life lost to a drug overdose is one too many,” Roberts continued. “I am determined to make sure that we implement prevention and harm reduction strategies, including having Narcan readily available, which could potentially save a life in the event of an opioid overdose.”
From March 2021 to March 2022, 109,000 people died from opioid overdoses in the U.S. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of injury-related deaths in America as young adults ages 18–25 are the biggest users of prescription drugs for nonmedical purposes.
According to the Mississippi Substance Use Surveillance System, the number of deaths involving synthetic opioids in Mississippi from 2020 to 2021 spiked by 51 percent. One out of every three overdose deaths in Mississippi in 2021 occurred among people younger than 35 years of age and deaths involving synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, accounted for 60 percent of drug-related fatalities.
Studies from the Mississippi Prescription Monitoring Program show that overdose deaths have dropped in the past two years, possibly due to the widespread availability of remedies like Narcan, which is now being sold at CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, and Walmart. The number of opioid-related deaths decreased by one percent from quarter one of 2022 to quarter one of 2023, and the total number of overdose deaths decreased by 8.7 percent.
All residence life staff and resident assistants at Southern Miss have been trained to administer the Narcan nasal spray. The full-time administrative team, as well as several maintenance team members, will also receive training.
Currently, kits are housed in the lobbies of the following residence halls: Scott, Vann, Luckday, Century Park North (1-4), Hillcrest, McCarty, Wilbur, and Hattiesburg. More are planned to be added in the future.
