A new harm reduction technique that started as a student project at Ohio State University is getting attention — and thousands of dollars in opioid settlement dollars — from Franklin County and the OneOhio Recovery Foundation.
The SOAR Initiative's Bad Batch Text Alert system aims to alert drug users and health officials if there is a deadly contaminant in the local drug supply. It also allows anyone to report contaminated drugs anonymously.
Now, Ohio’s most populous county and OneOhio — the statewide organization tasked with doling out billions of dollars from the opioid settlements — are trying the text alert system to reach more people in the state.
How the alert system works
Since it started in 2019, SOAR has grown beyond a student project. To sign up, you text the word SOAR to any of the organization’s 11 regional numbers. If a so-called “bad batch” of drugs is in your ZIP code, you receive an alert.
On the flipside, if you think you’ve received a drug that’s tainted with something that can hurt you, like fentanyl, you can text the word “report” and get a list of questions. People can also submit a report on SOAR’s website.
Tonja Catron, SOAR’s executive director, explained people can text any information they have on a possible bad batch.
“What was the substance that you thought you were buying? What was it reactive for, like xylazine? The ZIP code? And then any kind of detail that anyone wants to give us, like it was in a bag that had a Smurf stamp on the front or meth and it's blue,” she said.
Catron said when it launched in 2019, demand grew a little too quickly.
“When the (students) developed the alert system, they did not expect for it to get as big as it was. So the system crashed on us,” she said.
OneOhio is awarding $200,000 for software upgrades to fix that issue. Franklin County is awarding SOAR a $100,000 grant to add two new outreach coordinators in its central Ohio region.
Catron said these outreach coordinators work with people who use drugs every day. She was one of SOAR’s first coordinators before she became executive director.
The coordinators help people get signed up for the alerts and connect people with harm reduction resources. Catron said they currently have eight working in SOAR’s 11 regions.
Harm reduction strategies
The alert system is one of a number of strategies Ohio municipalities are using to combat the opioid epidemic. But some officials say strategies like these — which fall under the harm reduction umbrella — have critics.
Other harm reduction techniques include fentanyl test strips, naloxone distribution, clean needle exchange programs and overdose prevention sites.
“Harm reduction is about keeping people alive long enough that they have a chance at recovery. There's a reality. Dead people don't get a chance of recovery.”Melissa Pierson, Franklin County Office of Justice Policy & Programs
Franklin County Office of Justice Policy & Programs Interim Director Melissa Pierson said she has confidence in these techniques.
“There's a lot of naysayers out there that think harm reduction is enabling. I don't see it like that,” she said. “Harm reduction is about keeping people alive long enough that they have a chance at recovery. There's a reality. Dead people don't get a chance of recovery.”
Pierson said for years, the Franklin County Coroner has sent alerts to the community if there are five or more overdose deaths in a certain period of time. But SOAR’s program is more responsive real-time.
“We didn't want to wait for five deaths,” Pierson said. “So I'm not going to tell you that that information is always validated right away, but usually it's been pretty reliable.”
Catron said she is the only person at SOAR who gets the reports before an alert is sent out. She will text the person back and ask questions about the drugs and how they know it was contaminated.
Catron said statewide, SOAR sent between 15 to 20 alerts in September.
Beyond alerting individuals to bad batches, the alerts help the county quickly coordinate and target their harm reduction efforts.
“So when we know that there's potentially a bad batch in 43207, we are literally flooding 43207 with naloxone, fentanyl test strips, wound care, hygiene, and really wrapping around those that we know are impacted,” Pierson said.
Catron said SOAR has now partnered with community harm reduction organizations. This network is also developing neighborhood contacts for their outreach coordinators to work with.
Opioid settlement spending in central Ohio
Pierson said Franklin County is purposefully investing its opioid settlement money in innovation — spending almost $3 million of its settlement dollars to date on SOAR and other efforts like a halfway recovery house and a resource center for the homeless and those struggling with addiction.
Other municipalities are taking different approaches. Ohio’s capital city Columbus is putting nearly all of its funding into Columbus Public Health for nine positions focused on addiction and mental health programming.
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther’s Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer Fening told WOSU in an email these positions include addiction prevention counselors, licensed cognitive behavioral therapy counselors and substance use staff who analyze Columbus and Franklin County addiction trends to inform programs and policy.
“CPH has also invested settlement dollars in healthcare technologies, such as software and an electronic health record system, that support multiple public health offerings, including our clinical, in-home, behavioral health, addiction epidemiology and counseling services,” Fening said.
He said to date, Columbus has allocated about $3 million of the $18 million total allocation it expects to get from the settlements.
Franklin County has spent a total of $10 million so far, but expects millions more as the settlement money continues getting distributed by courts and the state.
Catron says 10,000 people have signed up for SOAR’s Bad Batch alerts. And while nearly half of those are in Central Ohio, they’re hoping the opioid settlement money will help them reach more people in the 10 other regions across the state.