Healthcare district declines to fund grant request to provide Narcan to schools

San Diego Union-Tribune - 9/6/2021

The Governing Board of the Grossmont Healthcare District recently granted nearly $350,000 to 11 entities, but the elected officials declined a grant request from a local nonprofit that is seeking to make Narcan available in some East County high schools.

The district annually gives out thousands of dollars to local agencies that work to better the health of the community. Among those receiving funding in the latest round of grants were the East County Transitional Living Center ($35,000 for a medical van), La Maestra Family Clinic ($35,000 toward diabetes treatment and prevention) and The Burn Institute ($34,000 for East County programming).

At its Aug. 20 meeting, however, the healthcare district board voted against a request for $25,000 from A New PATH, a local group that aims to end opioid overdosing.

Grossmont Healthcare District board and grant committee member Gloria Chadwick, a former psychiatric nurse, said the district was concerned about liability related to state laws.

A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment & Healing) wants to bring naloxone to some schools in the Grossmont Union High School District. Naloxone, which also goes by the name Narcan, is a drug that reverses an opioid overdose.

The San Diego County Office of Education on its website recommends that all county districts partner with the California Department of Health Care Services' Naloxone Distribution Project.

Countywide, A New PATH says, 152 individuals reportedly died from fentanyl-related overdoses in 2019, a number that rose to 461 in 2020. There were 528 reported opioid deaths overall in the county last year.

According to its grant application to the district, the project by A New PATH would have included education about harm reduction strategies, overdose prevention training and Narcan distribution, "targeting East County neighborhoods in San Diego County that are at high risk."

The grant application said the group was seeking to target three or four areas of East County with its project and identified potential partners, including the McAlister Institute, East County Transitional Living Center and East County Homeless Task Force for training and distribution. The grant request from the Spring Valley-based A New PATH said the request of $25,000 would help it serve 500 people ages 15 to 55.

"For youth outreach, we intend to work with Monte Vista, Mount Miguel, Valhalla and Grossmont High Schools," the application said.

Gretchen Burns Bergman, co-founder and executive director of A New PATH, said the district's grant committee told her they would not be able to fund the effort because they were afraid of liability issues related to giving Narcan to teens in school.

But Narcan availability is critical, according to April Ella, Director of A New PATH's Overdose Prevention Project.

"Having Narcan... is like having a fire extinguisher handy," Ella said. "It's better to have and not need, rather than to need and not have. Everyone should be trained how to recognize and respond to an opioid overdose and save a life."

A New PATH even obtained letters of support from San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore, Jeanne McAlister of the McAlister Institute, Cathryn Nacario of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) San Diego and others who backed the group's request.

According to the California Legislative Information website as part of the education code, "school nurses or trained personnel may use naloxone hydrochloride or another opioid antagonist to provide emergency medical aid to persons suffering, or reasonably believed to be suffering, from an opioid overdose."

Bergman said her group will continue to raise awareness about the crisis of accidental overdoses, especially "as depression, suicide, homelessness and drug use is rising, and fentanyl is increasing the numbers of accidental overdoses."

Through A New PATH's San Diego County overdose prevention trainings and Narcan distribution, Bergman said "we have 2,003 overdose reversals reported since the project started in 2014, and we have trained over 8,500 individuals," she said.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.