Series of Community-based Narcan Trainings to Begin This Week

FLORENCE — Tapestry, the Gándara Center, and the Hampden County Addiction Taskforce announced an upcoming series of community-based Narcan trainings.

The trainings will be offered to the public in various locations across Hampden County over the course of the next several weeks. Admission is free, and Narcan will be available for attendees, all made possible by a grant from the United Way.

Dates announced so far include Wednesday, Nov. 7, 5:30 p.m., Holyoke Public Library, 250 Chestnut St., Holyoke; and Tuesday, Nov. 13, 5:30 p.m., Chestnut Middle School auditorium, 355 Plainfield St., Springfield.

Tapestry will provide the trainings in both English and Spanish, with the intent of empowering community members, opiate drug users, families, and friends to save lives. Attendees will learn about rescue breathing, what Narcan is, and how to administer it.

In Massachusetts, there were 2,016 unintentional deaths from opioid-related overdoses in 2017, according to the state Department of Public Health (DPH). This is an 49{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} increase over 2014. There were 13 overdose deaths in Holyoke last year, and six in Northampton. Latino populations have experienced some of the fastest-growth rates of confirmed opioid-related deaths in Massachusetts. According to the DPH, between 2014 and 2017, opioid-related deaths among Latinos more than doubled in the state, a rate higher than any other demographic.