To prevent overdose deaths, Cumberland County is flooding communities with naloxone

S.J.S. is a motherly figure in the homeless encampment along Cedar Creek Road in Fayetteville, where a handful of people sleep in tents. She cooks and keeps the area clean and free of trash.

She also brings people back from the brink of death. 

In the past year and a half, she said, she has administered naloxone seven times to save the lives of three people experiencing opioid overdoses.

“We don’t lose them out here, we keep them,” said S.J.S., who asked to be identified by her initials to protect her privacy. “Almost everybody has OD’d out here. I don’t, of course, because I have to make sure they’re alive.”

Members of the Cumberland County-Fayetteville Opioid Response Team (C-FORT) restocked S.J.S.’s supply of naloxone on Aug. 11. It was part of the team’s naloxone saturation plan to distribute doses of the drug and provide overdose reversal education materials to residents and businesses along Bragg Boulevard, Cedar Creek Road and U.S. 301 on three Mondays this month.

“We have a very good Narcan distribution going to people who use drugs, and getting it directly in the hands of those folks,” said Greg Berry, C-FORT coordinator. “This [saturation plan] is partly about that, but this is also partly about equipping the community with the tools and information that they need, so that if they happen upon an overdose, they know how to recognize and how to respond with confidence in the moment.”

Increased access to naloxone is one of the most cited contributors to the drop in overdose death rates across the country and in Cumberland County. In North Carolina, counties that received at least 100 naloxone kits per 100,000 residents had lower overdose death rates, according to a 2019 study published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, an international and peer-reviewed journal.

From 2023 to 2024, the Cumberland County Department of Public Health, C-FORT and its members more than doubled the number of naloxone kits distributed in the community, according to data provided by Jennifer Green, the director of the county’s public health department. The groups handed out 924 kits in 2023 and 1,993 in 2024.

In that time, the county saw a 24% decrease in the county’s overdose death rate, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. The North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition reported community members used naloxone distributed by its team to reverse 101 overdoses between April and May this year.  

Organizations are on track to distribute even more naloxone this year, Green said. She said group members gave out naloxone kits to 54 businesses and 123 individuals so far during this month’s naloxone distribution plan.

“It’s very important that they come out and give us the Narcan, because without them, we wouldn’t have it,” S.J.S. said. “Without them guys, everybody would be dead.”

Saving a life

Jesse Garner and Torica Fuller walked up and down Cedar Creek Road on Aug. 11 with bags full of naloxone and drug test strips on their backs. They offered the supplies to anyone who stopped to speak with them.

The pair’s efforts were met with mixed reactions. Some community members readily took the overdose-reversing drug, including several managers of motels and hotels in the area who asked for multiple kits. Others needed convincing.

“You never know who might need it,” Fuller, a family nurse practitioner at the county public health department, said to a woman outside the Red Roof Inn.

“Maybe it’s not for you, but you come across someone who needs it,” Garner, who oversees the county public health department’s federal naloxone education grant, said to a man outside a BP gas station. 

Stigma surrounding drug use has been a sticking point for C-FORT and its members’ efforts to distribute naloxone to the community, said Jay Higgins, a diversion specialist with the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition. To convince people to accept a kit, he often tells the story of his overdose in 2019.

“They had Narcan and used two [doses] of it, and the second one got me back,” said Higgins, who’s now six years sober. “That ordeal just makes me really push this [naloxone distribution] because I know it works.”

Another threat to naloxone distribution is federal funding cuts. In May, the Trump administration proposed cutting an annual grant program from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that helps state and local organizations distribute naloxone and train first responders on how to administer the drug. It’s the same grant Garner oversees.

In addition to the at-risk grant, funding for Cumberland County’s naloxone distribution and education work comes from its allocations of national opioid settlement funds.

“We’re not here to make judgments about people’s lifestyle choices or how they ended up in the situation that they ended up in,” Berry said. “We’re here to try to offer them the support and the resources that they need to stay safe so we can save a life and help them make a better choice.”

CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.