Ms. Alice Bell This is Me

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1. 1. Harm Reduction Coalition : DRUG EXPERTS ADVISE EXTRA PRECAUTIONS IN HEROIN USE

   www.harmreduction.org/article. - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/6/2006   Last Visited: 12/7/2007

   Alice Bell, overdose prevention project coordinator at Prevention Point Pittsburgh, the region's only needle exchange program, said there had been talk about drug users in other cities overdosing on a powerful combination of heroin and a narcotic painkiller called fentanyl.
   
   Prevention Point staff had begun to inform its needle exchangers about the potential problem, but until two days ago no one had seen it here.
   
   This could be it, Ms. Bell recalled thinking, when she heard news media reports of an unusually high number of overdoses. It's not yet certain that the fentanyl and heroin combination has arrived on local streets.
   
   "What we know is that there's unusually strong heroin on the streets in various cities, including now in Pittsburgh," she said.
   ...
   And it may not be obvious when heroin has been laced with fentanyl, Ms. Bell noted. Dealers may not know, or tell the buyer, and a stamp on a bag is not a reliable indicator.
   
   So "it's really important for people to avoid using alone, if at all possible," Ms. Bell said. Also, "it's important for people to know what to do if you're with someone who overdoses, which means learning how to do rescue breathing and getting Narcan."
   
   Since July 2005, Prevention Point's education program has included training in the use of Narcan, and physician volunteers have written about 65 prescriptions for it, Ms. Bell said.
   
   Since then, "we have firsthand reports of 17 overdose reversals from people who have participated in the program," she said.

2. 2. Teaching drug overdose survival

   www.postgazette.com/pg/05206/5 - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/25/2005   Last Visited: 7/26/2005

   To a group of Allegheny County Jail inmates, Alice Bell gave a detailed presentation aimed at keeping them and others from dying from a drug overdose.
   ...
   Alice Bell, overdose presentation coordinator of Prevention Point Pittsburgh, uses a chart to talk to inmates at Allegheny County Jail as part of a program to give at-risk groups practical strategies to avoid drug overdoses.
   
   Overdoses kill more people locally than traffic accidents or homicides, Bell said before outlining ways to prevent an overdose or to intervene if one occurs.
   
   Bell and other staff members and volunteers for Prevention Point Pittsburgh, a local nonprofit, have presented the hour-long training to 3,000 people, 2,000 of them county jail inmates, since 2003.
   
   "We hope the 3,000 people we've talked to about this, and the people they've talked to, may have contributed to saving some people's lives," Bell told her audience, noting that drug overdose deaths in Allegheny County declined last year for the first time since 1999.
   ...
   While eliminating drug use is the best way to prevent overdose, "the reality is a lot of people continue to use drugs," Bell told about 75 inmates gathered in a maximum security area for her presentation earlier this month.
   ...
   One former inmate told Bell that guidance from the training helped him save his girlfriend's life.
   
   Another man told her that if he had received the training a year earlier, his daughter might be alive. She had overdosed and he "didn't know what to do," Bell said.
   ...
   That effort led to the overdose prevention effort in the jail, Bell said, noting that Calvin Lightfoot, the former jail warden, was especially supportive.
   ...
   "Not using drugs at all is the surest way to prevent an overdose," Bell told inmates during the training earlier this month. "But if you are using, not mixing drugs together goes a long way toward preventing an overdose."
   
   Many local overdose deaths, she noted, have been linked to use of more than one drug.
   
   She also recommended awareness of factors that could affect drug tolerance, such as illness and periods of drug treatment or incarceration, and suggested that her listeners not be alone when they use drugs. If an overdose occurs, another person present could intervene or summon help.
   
   Bell also addressed the common misconception that victims of opiate overdose should be packed in ice, noting that doing so could make the problem worse. "It lowers their body temperature, and their systems are already depressed."
   
   If overdose victims are conscious and breathing, walking them around might help, she said.
   
   If they're unconscious, she recommended calling 911 and starting rescue breathing, demonstrating the technique with an assistant, Alex Bennett.
   
   "The cure for a heroin or other opiate overdose is oxygen," she said. "If you can keep someone breathing, you can keep them alive."
   
   Narcan, if available, can be a big help, she said.
   
   "It's a pretty miraculous drug. People can be blue and not breathing, then they get an injection of Narcan and they come back."
   
   Bell stressed the importance of calling 911, but conceded her listeners may not want to stay until paramedics, and possibly the police, arrive.
   
   "Stay as long as you can," she said.
   
   Inmates applauded when she finished.

3. 3. MetroHealth Advantage Staff

   www.metrohealth.org/body.cfm?i - [Cached]

   Published on: 2/25/2008   Last Visited: 2/25/2008

   Alice Bell, Coordinator, Senior Community Outreach;