In 2017, over 80 deaths were recorded in Canada from opioid overdoses in the age group under 19. This prompted Lauren Cirpiano, professor at Ivey School of Business, along with some of her colleagues to create a tool for school boards to determine if it is cost effective to be putting naloxone kits in high school settings.
“High schools are a low risk setting compared to the settings we’d already seen studied in the literature. Naloxone in high risk settings is highly cost effective and we were wondering whether or not naloxone in a low risk setting like a high school would be a cost effective intervention,” said Cipriano.
When this research came out, London school boards responded with wanting nothing to do with naloxone kits. Cipriano explains that London being a low risk setting may be the reason.
“It may be the case that here in London, that when they analyzed their situation using the spreadsheet that it didn’t look good value for money.”
No Need for Naloxone
The London District Catholic School Board jumped the research and found there was no point in spending the money. Kathy Furlong is the Superintendent of Education for the Catholic School Board. She believes that they have better things to be spending their budget on.
“Our focus really is on intervention prevention and so, through the religion and family life curriculum and through the healthy active living curriculum, we’re really focused on prevention and intervention.”
Naloxone is not completely out of the question, but for the board at the moment, it is not in the forefront.
“We’re constantly assessing. The answer is not never and the answer is not yes. We’re always constantly assessing where we’re at and again really working on the intervention and prevention.”
Jay Loosley, Superintendent of Education at EMS London says that paramedics have been trained highly for administering naloxone.
“Advanced care paramedics have been carrying naloxone now for many years, well over ten years. Our primary care paramedics are now carrying naloxone. They’ve been trained on all the signs and symptoms of opioid overdoses and how to manage them.”
Therefore, the extensive training of paramedics use of naloxone and increased response time gives a reason for high schools not to worry about carrying naloxone. He also believes that high schools around here really are not the right demographic for naloxone kits.
“At this time I would say no. When we just look at the general demographics of where we are responding to 911 calls for narcotic overdoses, they’re not at schools. They’re more, you know, out in the public and on the streets.
Western Campus and Naloxone
The Student Emergency Response Team (SERT) started carrying naloxone in 2017 due to the opioid crisis on the rise and a number of opioid overdose fatalities in the University age group.
“We started carrying naloxone two years ago. The reason being was just for the increase in opioid related deaths that we were seeing in Canada and specifically London so, we were just worried about that making its way on campus and into our student population,” said Tom Gibson, Executive Director of SERT.
When asked if he would consider naloxone in a high school setting, Gibson said naloxone for Western has been a game changer and he would consider high schools pick it up in the next few years.
Naloxone from a naloxone kit.
Overall, the new research has changed nothing for high schools. They will continue to monitor the naloxone situation and take action when it is necessary to do so.
