CHRIS ATWOOD FOUNDATION INC

The Chris Atwood Foundation aims to protect the lives of individuals who are addicted to opioid painkillers and stop opioid overdose death through overdose reversal trainings and access to naloxone; prevent the misdirection of opioid painkillers from household medicine cabinets, and to educate the public about the disease of substance use disorder in order to prevent new addictions and de-stigmatize the issue.

We target overdose reversal training to individuals most at risk. According to the CDC and National Harm Reduction Coalition, over 80% of opioid overdose reversals are conducted by persons who use drugs. For that reason we go where they go and provide free trainings and narcan (the medication that reverses opioid overdose.) This includes homeless shelters, clinics, treatment centers, tent communities, methadone clinics, etc. Our secondary population is persons who live with someone addicted to opioids, like family and roommates. By carefully targeting these priority populations we ensure that our donor's dollars are making the biggest impact possible. In order to further increase access to life-saving naloxone in Virginia we have successfully seen two bills through to passage that now allow us to dispense the most cost-effective form of naloxone in the community, allowing us to reach more than twice as many people as previously.

We have trained over 100 individuals within Northern Virginia as Revive Opioid Overdose Reversal Instructors who can be sent out into the community to conduct trainings and dispense narcan where needed. We are licensed by the Virginia Board of Pharmacy to store and dispense naloxone. Over the years we have developed a reputation in the community of being a safe space for persons with substance use disorder to seek help and resources. We have partnered with the local Community Services Boards to share data, collaborate on trainings, and best serve the community. We have also partnered with law enforcement to receive notifications of areas that are experiencing an increase in overdoses so that we can provide targeted trainings in the areas where they are most needed.

We have dramatically increased access to life-saving naloxone in Virginia by designing and and ensuring the passage of two laws in the Virginia General Assembly, both of which passed unanimously. The first law allows community overdose reversal programs like ours to dispense naloxone directly to the people we train. The second allows those programs to provide a much more affordable form of naloxone which cut the cost of our program in half. We now know of almost 100 individuals in Northern Virginia who have used the naloxone and/or skills they learned in our program to reverse an opioid overdose. This number is likely very under-reported due to stigma, and the realities of the population we serve. We have also advocated on a national level in multiple congressional forums on the opioid crisis for which our executive director was a panelist.