Community collaboration is a key component of this strategy and having resources like the Post Overdose Response Team (PORT) that has been formed and is up and running in Ashe County. This is due to a partnership with Ashe Medics Community Paramedic Program and Ashe Memorial Hospital providing direct service to community members who have experienced an opioid overdose.

AppHealthCare’s PSS have responded to 60 PORT calls since the program began in November 2020, and other successes include:

• Number of naloxone kits distributed through PORT = 166
• Number of overdose reversals reported through PORT = 36
   

• AppHealthCare Peer Support Specialists
  • In 2019, AppHealthCare hired their two, part-time, peer support specialists (PSS). Then applied for the Community Linkages to Care grant that, once received, allowed for the support of an additional (full-time) PSS to serve the district. There are three PSS that work across the district. The PSSs work as advocates for those struggling with substance use disorder by relating on a personal level through lived experience to promote trust among the people they serve. The PSSs work to serve the community through education, prevention measures, harm reduction, training, connecting individuals to care, working with justice-involved individuals, and helping with environmental and policy change work.
• Community Paramedic Program
  • Improvement in quality of life and outcomes for patients by identifying and bridging the gaps to optimum healthcare, by highly trained paramedics.
• Ashe Memorial Hospital Emergency Department
  • For the past 80 years, Ashe Memorial Hospital has provided the highest quality medical care available to the people of Jefferson and Ashe County, North Carolina, and surrounding areas. Our board-certified physicians, nurses and staff are members of the High Country community and work diligently to keep that community as healthy as possible.

First Responders play a vital role in curbing the opioid epidemic. Often, they are the first on the scene of an overdose and help to provide lifesaving medications (naloxone) to reverse the overdose. In addition, many are also called to respond to a variety of other health or social needs for people who use drugs. The NC DHHS recognizes and values the role that First Responders play in reducing the harms and deaths caused by drug use. 

Communities across the state are coming together to create an effective response to the significant increase in overdose deaths in recent years. Post-overdose response teams (PORTs; also called Quick Response Teams, Rapid Response, Community Response Teams, etc.) are an emerging strategy to meaningfully engage with people who have experienced overdose. These teams follow up with patients who have experienced an overdose within 72 hours. Teams seek to link the patient with appropriate care ranging from harm reduction services to treatment to recovery supports.

In 2019, the NC Office of Emergency Medical Services in partnership with the NC Division of Public Health hosted several regional trainings for post-overdose response team (PORT) development across the state. These PORT Trainings equipped participants to start or continue development of programs in partnership with first responders and harm reductionists. In addition to EMS-based partnerships, teams learned to meaningfully engage with people with lived experience, people in recovery, and other harm reduction specialists when developing and operating PORTs.