More towns across Franklin County have started the process of installing outdoor naloxone cabinets, increasing access to the life-saving drug that is designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdose.

The Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG), through its Cooperative Public Health Service, started the Rural Communities Naloxone Cabinet Initiative this year to have naloxone cabinets installed in 15 towns.

Forty-three cabinets have already been installed in Franklin and Worcester counties, including Greenfield, Montague, Orange and Athol, with grant funding received by the Opioid Task Force of Franklin County and the North Quabbin Region. Other organizations like Tapestry Health and the North Quabbin Community Coalition have played significant roles in getting these cabinets installed and maintained across North Quabbin towns.

“There’s been this great push toward understanding-the importance of this as a life saving medicine,” FRCOG Health Educator and Epidemiologist Maureen O’Reilly said. “The member boards of health of this health district … decided they also wanted to have cabinets up, and got some other grant funding to do that.”

FRCOG’s Director of Community Health Phoebe Walker noted that the Opioid Task Force and the Cooperative Public Health Service receive different types of funding from federal and state sources to supply the cabinets, so collaboration is important to understand where naloxone is most needed and what funding is available to remediate the issue.

“Public health doesn’t have boundaries, but our day jobs do, so in working toward a lot of these efforts, it does have to be putting together puzzle pieces to achieve that result on the ground,” Walker said about the collaboration.

Debra McLaughlin, coordinator of the Opioid Task Force, said the move for towns to install outdoor cabinets represents an expansion of accessibility to an important tool.

“It’s been really exciting to see how this effort has been embraced by our community to make this life-saving medication available, much in the same way that an EpiPen would be available or an [automated external defibrillator] device,” McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin explained that overdose data is provided to the Opioid Task Force. A spike in overdose deaths occurred in 2021 related to opioids in Franklin County and Athol, and a reduction has been seen in 2022 and 2023 data. This data can help inform the organization’s work.

“We contribute [the reduction] to a variety of strategies, not just the blanketing of Narcan everywhere,” McLaughlin said, referring to the common brand name of drug with naloxone as its active ingredient. “Since we started actively pursuing the distribution of Narcan and the naloxone box strategy in the last year and a half, we’ve distributed nearly 3,500 kits in a three-year period.”

Participating boards of health in the Cooperative Public Health Service area, including Monroe, Charlemont and Ashfield, have approved the installation process, with Colrain and Buckland anticipating approval in the coming weeks. On Aug. 21, Bernardston’s Selectboard approved outdoor naloxone cabinets to be installed, and Gill approved the installations at a Aug. 12 Selectboard meeting.

Bernardston Board of Health Chair Barbara Killeen spoke to the Bernardston Selectboard members, who offered their approval for Killeen to begin coordinating with Bernardston Fire and Police departments on where to place two outdoor cabinets for access on town property.

A Gill Selectboard meeting also approved the Gill Board of Health to install two cabinets. Randy Crochier, a member of the Gill Selectboard and a regional health agent with FRCOG, explained that the cabinets are planned to be installed at a local business in Gill and at Town Hall.

Crochier said the naloxone boxes serve as an access point to harm reduction within the community, and can act as a destigmatizing force for the medicine itself.

“Unfortunately, opioids are out there, fentanyl is out there, and you don’t know who’s going to be affected by it,” Crochier said. “This just gives a place where people can discreetly get Narcan to have at their home if they need it without necessarily going through the stigma.”

Crochier pointed out that naloxone is not exclusive to people struggling with an addiction, either. It can be a resource for people using prescription opioids, for accidental intake or for fentanyl exposure. He feels it is an item that should be normalized as a tool that can be helpful for those who need it.

“I think we’re trying to just normalize the fact that nobody would think twice about a fire alarm being in a business building, so let’s try to normalize it a little bit,” he said.

Information on how to identify an overdose and information on naloxone is available through the Opioid Task Force website at opioidtaskforce.org/get-information. A Zoom information session on Thursday, Sept. 26, at 2 p.m. on public access to naloxone is available for registration at tinyurl.com/ysvpy4uf.

Erin Leigh-Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com.