Project Lazarus provides expertise in managing a community-based educational and interventional program that intends to reduce deaths among patients that are at increased risk from abusing or misusing narcotics and dying from an accidental poisoning (unintentional drug overdose).
Project Lazarus is the only prescription drug prevention program in the U.S. that integrates
- Community knowledge and coalition building
- Continuous surveillance of medical or prescription data and vital statistics
- Prevention based on education of medical care providers, patients, their family or peers, and the community in which they reside
- Rescue of potentially fatal overdoses in persons who misuse or abuse opioids through the administration of naloxone by non-medical personnel, and subsequent treatment referrals to medical/psychiatric/supportive care, if appropriate
- Ongoing program evaluation of process and outcome measures and research findings
Specifically, Project Lazarus includes a 20 minute structured educational intervention that teaches how to recognize the signs of an opioid overdose; understand the importance of calling 911; perform rescue breathing; administer intranasal naloxone; and obtain treatment of substance abuse and misuse. The Project also includes a protocol for documenting the medical encounter (following the paradigm for influenza vaccination) and provides a kit containing pre-filled syringes of naloxone with adapters for nasal administration. This is an opioid overdose rescue program imbedded within a medical care provider and lay population community education program for appropriate opioid use and misuse prevention.
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| North Carolina Medical Board statement on Drug Overdose Prevention
The Board is concerned about the three-fold rise in overdose
deaths over the past decade in the State of North Carolina as a result
of both prescription and non-prescription drugs. The Board has
reviewed, and is encouraged by, the efforts of Project Lazarus, a pilot
program in Wilkes County that is attempting to reduce the number of
drug overdoses by making the drug naloxone* and an educational program
on its use available to those persons at risk of suffering a drug
overdose.
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The prevention of drug overdoses is consistent with the Boards statutory mission to protect the people of North Carolina. The Board therefore encourages its licensees to cooperate with programs like Project Lazarus in their efforts to make naloxone available to persons at risk of suffering opioid drug overdose.
* Naloxone is the antidote used in emergency medical settings to reverse respiratory depression due to opioid toxicity."
Source http://www.ncmedboard.org/position_statements/detail/drug_overdose_prevention/
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