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Alliance Note: In a forum sponsored by ���������’s yesterday, NYC Commission of Health and Mental Hygiene Dr. Ashwin Vasan committed to expanding efforts to address staggering rates of overdoses and emphasized that he would like to eventually scale back on a police response to people with major mental health challenges by improving funding to B-Heard. Instead, the Alliance and our local allies are calling for the implementation of a peer-led partnership with EMS workers in the manner of the long successful as used in Eugene, Oregon. The Alliance has also called on the City to revamp its recent proposal to expand the use of clubhouse member capacity to include rather than to risk the survival of smaller neighborhood clubhouses. The recently released Request for Proposals (RFP) has caused concerns about possible closures of existing Clubhouses. Our allies have put together a petition calling for the City to amend the RFP and work with existing Clubhouses to increase membership while not risking the closure of any programs and the disruption of many trusted relationships built at existing Clubhouses. Sign the today!

���������� City Health Commissioner Backs More Safe Injection Sites, Less Police In Mental Health Response
  ���������’s Health Pulse   November 16, 2023

���������� City’s health commissioner said Wednesday that it was “disappointing” that Gov. Kathy Hochul signaled that she will not use the state’s opioid settlement funds to support overdose prevention centers, but maintained that the city will continue preparing to expand safe injection sites.

Dr. Ashwin Vasan said during a live interview with ���������’s on Wednesday that in the face of , officials should stop being selective about approaches to support people with substance use disorder and fund a variety of solutions.

“The numbers are going in the wrong direction,” Vasan said at ���������’s forum on the mental health crisis. “As someone whose job it is to protect lives, save lives, that doesn’t seem to me to be a smart strategy to shut doors.”

���������� City is home to the state’s only two overdose prevention centers, which are both run by the nonprofit OnPoint NYC. The sites do not receive public funding because of state concerns about legal and regulatory ambiguity, despite calls from an opioid advisory board to use settlement funds to support overdose prevention centers.

Initial data released by OnPoint NYC shows that the centers have been successful in averting drug overdoses. The city’s two overdose prevention centers have prevented more than 1,000 deaths since they opened in 2021, according to the nonprofit. 

Vasan said at the ���������’s event that he is “not closing the door on OPCs” despite refusals to support them with public money by the state, adding that he remains hopeful that the city will “find the leadership in the legal and regulatory space” to expand. The city has committed a portion of its initial share of opioid settlement funds, which totals $150 million over five years, to support the expansion of overdose prevention centers, and has published guidance for currently operating and future sites.

The commissioner added that the expansion of overdose prevention centers is not the city’s only response to the crisis—the city also plans to ramp up its distribution of naloxone, a medication that can reverse overdoses, as well as invest in expanding access to medication-assisted treatment such as methadone and buprenorphine.

Vasan said the  to address the  focuses not only on reducing overdoses, but serious mental illness and youth mental health. To address serious mental illness, the city has leaned on police involvement—a resource Vasan said he would like to eventually scale back on.

“I think law enforcement officials will tell you in this city and all across this country, they don’t want to be doing mental health response,” Vasan said. He noted that the city is focused on improving funding and staffing of , a response team that deploys mental health workers from the fire department and ���������� City Health + Hospitals to people in crisis, instead of police. The nationwide mental health hotline, 988, is also a part of the city’s effort to reduce its reliance on law enforcement in responding to mental health crises.

“I think over time, we will start to see that shift happen,” Vasan said. “I wish it could be faster.”

Prevention is another tenet of the city’s mental health response. Vasan said early intervention initiatives can address mental illnesses before they become severe–an approach that is critical to serving kids and teens.

The commissioner announced the city’s launch of a  to offer tele-therapy to teenagers across the city at no cost. The platform, called Teenspace, provides talk, text or video therapy to teens from licensed therapists, and became available to youth as early as Wednesday. Vasan also emphasized the role of employers in providing pay equity, flexible work conditions and mental health benefits to workers to support the city’s efforts to address the mental health crisis. Efforts to improve mental health are a part of the city’s effort to improve quality of life and increase life expectancy of ����������ers, he added. The city launched a campaign called HealthyNYC this month to bump life expectancy to exceed 83 years by 2030.