{"id":201490,"date":"2021-09-22T22:17:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-23T02:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/?post_type=bu-article&#038;p=201490"},"modified":"2022-12-13T12:44:03","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T17:44:03","slug":"student-uses-harm-reduction-to-tackle-overdose-crisis","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/articles\/2021\/student-uses-harm-reduction-to-tackle-overdose-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Uses Harm Reduction to Tackle Overdose Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<div class=\"wp-block-editorial-leadin sphnews-block-editorial-leadin is-style-side-by-side has-media has-wider has-media-focus-left-top has-dark-theme\">\n\t\t<div class=\"container-lockup\">\n\n\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-leadin-media\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<img width=\"600\" height=\"362\" src=\"\/sph\/files\/2021\/09\/Stephen-Murray-600x362-1.png\" class=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"container-words-outer\">\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"container-words-inner\">\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"wp-prepress-tag\">Student Profile<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<h1 class=\"head\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStudent Uses Harm Reduction to Tackle Overdose Crisis\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<h4 class=\"deck\">Stephen Murray, an Executive MPH student and Lieutenant for Northern Berkshire EMS, is working to break down stigma and change public views of substance use disorder. <\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar js-block-editorial-metabar sphnews-prepress-layout-metabar\">\n\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-date\">September 22, 2021<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-credits\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<ul data-credit-type=\"By\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/authors\/mallory-bersi\/\">Mallory Bersi<\/a><\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/ul>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-share js-bu-prepress-share-tools\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-twitter\"><span>Twitter<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-facebook\"><span>Facebook<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-action\"><\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\n\n\n<p>Stephen Murray is tired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He is tired of seeing parents bury their children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He is tired of the stigma surrounding people who use substances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He is tired of pulling people out of the \u201cstream,\u201d dead or alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And he is demanding change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A full-time Executive Master of Public Health student at the School of Public Health, Murray works as a Lieutenant for Northern Berkshire EMS, which serves the City of North Adams, Mass. and the surrounding communities of Northern Berkshire County and Southern Vermont. He has responded to over 100 overdoses in his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen you work in frontline medicine, you hear a lot of stigmatizing language, especially towards people who use drugs,\u201d says Murray. \u201cCalling people addicts or junkies, or complaining about having to respond to another overdose. It is exhausting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Murray, this language is personal. He has been in recovery for more than 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI am an overdose survivor,\u201d he says, \u201cand I often found myself in rooms full of people who were talking badly about people like me, about people that I have cared about. It\u2019s not right, and it needed to change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2019, Murray spoke at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.masslive.com\/news\/2019\/09\/we-do-not-have-to-be-anonymous-paramedic-stephen-murray-has-his-own-story-to-share-with-those-struggling-with-opioid-addiction.html\">Voices for Recovery event<\/a> in North Adams, sharing publicly his story of recovery for the first time. He was in uniform.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI wanted to share my story with people in a way that was inspiring, but also in a way that breaks down stigma among first responders and other health care providers,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was important to me that people see someone in uniform unashamedly speaking about their own struggles with substance use.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since then, Murray has propelled himself into the national conversation on substance use, working specifically in harm reduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He works closely with the organization <a href=\"https:\/\/neverusealone.com\/\">Never Use Alone<\/a>, a virtual supervised consumption site, offering an anonymous space to use substances safely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBeing alone while using is the number one risk factor for fatal overdose,\u201d says Murray. \u201cFor me, there has always been this pressing need to convince people that using alone is really dangerous, and they can reduce their risk of dying by just being with somebody. Never Use Alone really functions to bridge this gap without shame, judgement, or pushing treatment on anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When someone is planning to use alone, they can call the Never Use Alone hotline, where an operator will take their exact location and stay on the phone with them. If the caller becomes unresponsive, the operator will activate emergency medical services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-vimeo alignright wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"responsive-video responsive-vimeo\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Never Use Alone: Harm Reduction in Action\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/576541936?h=c345946d94&amp;dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption>Murray speaks about Never Use Alone with Kimber King, who he saved from an overdose because she called the hotline. Source: Great Sky Media<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Since it was founded in 2019, the Never Use Alone hotline has received over 4,400 calls, with 28 EMS calls and 28 lives saved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Murray helped to launch Never Use Alone hotlines in Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont, and currently works on the backend to train phone operators and ensure everything runs smoothly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFatal overdoses are one hundred percent preventable,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery fatal overdose is a policy failure in the sense that it could have been prevented with some sort of intervention, so I am really proud of the work that Never Use Alone is doing. It is consistent with my work as a paramedic, and I am so glad that I have taken a leadership role with them because what they are doing is really beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to his work with Never Use Alone, Murray has joined a local addiction task force and is designing a new EMS-based post-overdose program to connect people who recently experienced a non-fatal overdose, and are thus at higher risk of a fatal overdose, with support services. Many of these programs, Murray says, are currently police-based, which can pose a number of issues. His agency will be the pilot launch site for the program in Berkshire County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Murray transitions his work from frontline medicine to public health, he says he is growing more and more frustrated with the system\u2019s resistance to change, especially around drug use, highlighting that the criminality of drugs is the driving factor in the overdose crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf we want to have 100,000 people die a year, we can keep doing the same stuff over and over and expecting the same results,\u201d he says. \u201cWe are not able to have supervised consumption sites, we are not able to offer a safe drug supply, and we are really obsessed with abstinence-based recovery. I\u2019ve been responding to overdoses for eight years, and we still respond to the same, if not more, overdoses a year. What we are doing is not working.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Murray hopes to use his MPH to position himself more \u201cupstream,\u201d and step into a more official public health role, eventually hoping to influence drug policy at the national level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Aside from his physical distance from SPH, Murray says that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/education\/degrees-and-programs\/executive-master-of-public-health-mph\/\">online, asynchronous Executive MPH<\/a> made sense for his busy schedule, as well as for him and his growing family (he and his wife welcomed their fifth child a few weeks ago).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He says that with the smaller class sizes of the EMPH, he has been able to connect with his professors and peers in ways that he hasn\u2019t experienced in the past. Outside of class, he has even started collaborating with one of his peers, who is also in recovery, on launching a Never Use Alone hotline in Maine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With his work, family, and school, Murray\u2019s schedule is booked, but it\u2019s just the way that he likes it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m more organized than I have ever been,\u201d he says. \u201cMy days are scheduled down to the half hour, but the busier I get, the more relaxed I am. Even though I am busy, I still manage to take a nap every day, I spend a lot of time with my kids, and I am doing work that I believe in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stephen Murray is tired. He is tired of seeing parents bury their children. He is tired of the stigma surrounding people who use substances. He is tired of pulling people out of the \u201cstream,\u201d dead or alive. And he is demanding change. A full-time Executive Master of Public Health student at the School of Public [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14852,"featured_media":201495,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"Student Profile","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[1926,1789,2403,2489,3177,3584],"bu-publication":[3516],"sphnews-article-category":[3519,3531,3541],"sphnews-topic":[],"bu_edition":[3837],"media_type":[],"profile_tax":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/201490"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14852"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201490"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/201490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201508,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/201490\/revisions\/201508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201490"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=201490"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-article-category?post=201490"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-topic?post=201490"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=201490"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=201490"},{"taxonomy":"profile_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_tax?post=201490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}