Thanks to a $250,000 grant from the BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Health Foundation, the Tennessee Highway Patrol and 15 other law enforcement agencies across the state of Tennessee will be receiving lifesaving medicine that could help reduce the number of opioid overdose deaths. This lifesaving medicine, called naloxone, works by blocking or reversing the effects […]
Highway patrol gets naloxone under BCBST grant
Holly Fletcher May 2, 2017 More than 2,800 naloxone kits, the temporary antidote to opioid overdose, will be distributed to a variety of agencies statewide in an effort to get more kits of the drug into the hands of law enforcement and first responders. The Tennessee High Patrol will be receiving 900 kits, and every state […]
Tennessee’s plans to battle opioid abuse: nurses in recovery, naloxone kits
March 31, 2017 Kristi L. Nelson The state’s new weapons to fight the opioid addiction epidemic might be nurses who have been addicts themselves, and naloxone kits in the hands of those most likely to overdose. Oh, and $13.8 million from the Sen. Lamar Alexander-led 21st Century Cures Act. The Tennessee Department of Mental Health […]
BCBS, UT to provide opioid antidote, training to law enforcement
How many of the 1,263 Tennesseans who died of opioid overdoses in 2014 could have been saved with an opioid antidote? There’s no way to know, said Don Green, executive director of the University of Tennessee Law Enforcement Innovation Center, but he hopes some training the center is providing starting this month can dramatically decrease […]
