As Opioid Overdoses Increase, Dallas Forms a New Partnership Designed to Prevent Deaths

The opiate crisis in America is still raging, and it has hit North Texas with a wallop. In Dallas, suspected opioid overdoses have seen a dramatic rise in number over the past three years. And with that number, the amount of Narcan administered by city EMS personnel has also skyrocketed. Narcan is a prescription nasal spray that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose, and Dallas needs as much of it as it can get.

According to Dallas Fire-Rescue Battalion Chief Scott Clumpner, the department administered 800 doses of Narcan in 2020 and 1,200 doses in 2021. He says that so far this year, the department has administered 1,950 doses of Narcan. He pointed out that not necessarily everyone who received Narcan had overdosed, but that some instances were the result of emergency personnel seeing enough signs of an overdose to make the call on administering the medicine.

“Looking at the past three years is the quickest way for me to run the numbers and know we have a problem in Dallas,” Clumpner says. “We’re going to try and get ahead of it.”

The effort to deal with the increasing number of opioid overdoses in Dallas comes in the form of a new opioid response team, a program that was approved by Dallas City Council during its Dec. 14 meeting. The new effort is a three-year collaboration with Fort Worth-based Recovery Resource Council, a nonprofit specializing in addiction recovery and funded by a Texas Health and Human Services initiative.

Eric Neidermyer, CEO of Recovery Resource Council, says his organization operates overdose response teams in Tarrant County and will soon do the same in Denton. With the help of the Recovery Resource Council, the new program goes beyond the past practice of simply administering a life-saving drug. There are opponents of supplying drug addicts with Narcan, but Neidermayer suggests a basic level of humanity should help people understand its need as overdoses continue to mount.

“I think many are recognizing the need to try to save as many lives as possible,” Neidermayer says. “Some people still believe that giving Narcan is enabling people to continue to use drugs, but everyone we give Narcan to is someone’s son, daughter, spouse, brother or sister. Giving them a chance to recover from an overdose gives them the chance to change their lives and start a path to recovery.”

The path to recovery Neidermayer mentions is the key new point of the way Dallas will handle opioid overdoses. There are elements of awareness and education, as well as vital follow-up with patients who have received Narcan that will hopefully have a more lasting impact.

Clumpner says his department will have a full-time paramedic dedicated to the opioid response team, and that the Recovery Resource Council will provide a full-time employee trained in addiction and recovery devoted to following up with those who receive Narcan in Dallas.

“Looking at the past three years is the quickest way for me to run the numbers and know we have a problem in Dallas. We’re going to try and get ahead of it.” – Scott Clumpner, Dallas Fire-Rescue

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One of the activities the Recovery Resource Council employee will carry out is to try to talk to family members of the patient who overdosed within 24–48 hours and even teach them how to administer Narcan should the need arise in the future. There will also be seven “community paramedics,” Clumpner says, who will visit patients who, they hope, will enroll in rehab programs to help them stay on the right track.

Because the education element of the program revolves around those who first receive Narcan for an overdose, the city’s hope is that the opioid response team can take a horrific moment and use that as a jumping off point for something good. Clumpner has seen programs similar to this one work in other large cities and is hopeful about the lives his team can affect. He hopes that the awareness they create can lead to less need for Narcan.

“If our staff gets the door shut in their face, there’s nothing we can do about that,” Clumpner says. “But hopefully we’ll get to talk with them and do an assessment on how they’re doing. The goal of this program is to prevent death.”