Opioid abatement program off to slow start. AFR, State remain optimistic.

A collaboration between the New Mexico Department of Health and Albuquerque Fire Rescue aimed at curbing addiction and overdoses is off to a slow start, mainly due to drug users refusing treatment.

The departments kicked off the “Golden Opportunity” program on Oct. 15, allowing paramedics, already equipped with Narcan to reverse overdoses, to also offer Suboxone and then connect the patient to inpatient drug treatment, if they choose.

Narcan is used to reverse an overdose, while Suboxone is used to reduce opioid withdrawals for those trying to kick the habit.

“We expected it to be a slow rollout. A lot of people have declined so far, but we’ve enrolled five people,” AFR Chief Emily Jaramillo told the Journal on Thursday.

Jaramillo said the five people who took up the offer were given Suboxone and placed in an inpatient treatment program. AFR and its collaborators will track the patients’ progress as much as they can, she said.

Jaramillo said many people who declined Suboxone and treatment were living on the streets. The reason, she speculated, was that they lack the same support system of those who have shelter while battling addiction.

She remains optimistic that the program will catch on.

“We’re not wasting our time because supporting five people who otherwise may have never received treatment in the past two months is life-changing for those individuals and everything starts with one or two people, and then it starts to catch on,” Jaramillo said.

According to the most recent data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New Mexico’s drug overdose rate was 50.3 per 100,000 residents, ranking seventh in the country with 1,024 overdose deaths in 2022.

“We look at anyone that’s taken advantage of opportunity for connections to treatment as a win,” Dominic Rodriguez, director of nursing services at the state’s Public Health Division in Albuquerque, told the Journal on Friday.

Rodriguez added that opioid disorders are “really complex problems” that affect a wide range of people in the state.

“Yes, the numbers are small, but it is a good building block so we can continue to collaborate with our partners to figure out what we do next to support folks seeking medication for opioid-use disorder,” Rodriguez said.

The procedure for Golden Opportunity begins with AFR paramedics treating an overdose with Narcan and then offering an initial 16mg dose of Suboxone, with a secondary 8mg dose, along with the opportunity for an individual to go to one of four partnered area clinics to be treated.

AFR has given 501 doses of Narcan to people overdosing so far this year.

“Once we reverse an overdose, that’s sometimes a really vulnerable time for that person or that family because a lot of times they haven’t been breathing, and a lot of times we see people are a little bit more vulnerable and willing to get help,” Jaramillo said.

If the person accepts treatment, then the Albuquerque Community Safety department transports them to one of the four clinics: Courageous Transformations, CARE Campus, Duke City Recovery Toolbox, or Casa de Salud, which are part of the collaboration. The city-run Gateway Sobering Center will be added to the list upon its January opening, which has been delayed from its initially anticipated mid-December launch.

Jaramillo, a longtime paramedic who was promoted to head AFR in 2023, said throughout her career she has seen the substance of choice for the unhoused community shift: from alcohol to opioids.

“We didn’t have the same level of people chronically homeless and dealing with serious addiction. A lot of our responses to the homeless, 10 years ago, was involving alcohol intoxication,” Jaramillo said. “We saw kind of this shift to fentanyl ... around 2020, when everybody was focused on COVID.”

An estimated 5,000 people are living without shelter in Albuquerque.

Both Rodriguez and Jaramillo believe that the collaboration will make their departments ability to reach out and assist the city’s population experiencing homelessness easier and more successful.

“That’s what makes this partnership unique is it takes, I think, a creative approach to help meet the needs that all individuals have. Unhoused certainly adds another layer of needs that we need to work through in order to help,” Rodriguez said.

While the program rollout has been slower than expected, Jaramillo still believes the five lives saved are an immeasurable accomplishment.

“You can’t quantify it to those people’s family members,” she said. “They’re getting their loved one back, and so we just hope to see it multiply, and we’re willing to be patient and get there.”