Mayor de Blasio Announces Nation’s First Overdose Prevention Center Services to Open in New York City
Exciting news! New York City will become the first U.S. city to open authorized overdose prevention centers (OPCs), i.e., safe places where people who use drugs can receive medical care and be connected to treatment and social services. Several years ago, NYC DOHMH released “Overdose Prevention in New York City: Supervised Injection as a Strategy to Reduce Opioid Overdose and Public Injection,” a feasibility study that found that establishing four OPCs could avert up to 130 overdoses and save up to $7 million in public health care costs annually. New York City’s first OPCs will open in existing spaces of the Washington Heights Corner Project and the New York Harm Reduction Educators in Manhattan’s Washington Heights and East Harlem, respectively.
The Mayor’s press release announcing the OPCs is available here, and New York Times coverage of the announcement is here.
Last Updated on December 3, 2021 by HepFree NYC
