Pg. 8 MAY 20 - JUNE 2, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM
NEWS & OPINION FEATURE A HOME FOR HELP
medical assistance, and other risks that go beyond the underlying health vulnerabilities that their lifestyle would already bring about if they were to catch the virus. Sure enough, less than a month into the stayat-home order, those dangers began to play out in Charlotte. According to CMPD, between March 26 when the order was handed down and April 22, police responded to 100 overdose calls, with 10 resulting in deaths. The call total was a 24% increase compared to the same time span in 2019. “If you listen to the experts across the country, they’re concerned that this spike is going to continue to intensify with some of these stay-at-home orders,” said CMPD spokesperson Rob Tufano at an April 22 press conference. “People are in close quarters together, a lot of anxiety out there with the
“The engagements are much different because we’re not in a space,” Kestner said. “It feels and looks very different. We’re all very uncomfortable with it quite honestly. With social-distancing measures, safety protocols, it’s very hard to do aggressive outreach right now. Also, our core QCNE team, we all have children. So there’s a lot of things to consider. But that was what we’ve been able to do.” Between March 1 and April 16, QCNE has enrolled 29 new participants, distributed 16,890 syringes and 172 Naloxone kits, and had 19 reversals reported. The work she and Ayers are doing is helping, it seems, anecdotally at least. While they’ve seen sharp increases in overdoses not only in Mecklenburg but the five other counties they serve — Union, Stanly, Cabarrus, Rowan and Davidson — they’ve not seen the same among their own participants.
for participants, offering not only a fixed site for the needle exchange program, but for peer-led support groups, a community garden and a site for testing and medication-assisted treatment from partnering providers. The Center for Prevention Services (CPS) runs off donations and grants, the biggest being a 15-month, Queen City Needle Exchange $275,000 grant from the North Carolina Department delays wellness center plans of Health and Human Services. During the recent crisis, the organization has received additional grants amid crisis from Cardinal Innovations, Novant Health and the Comer Family Foundation. BY RYAN PITKIN Much of that money goes to staffing and supplies. CPS spends between $80,000-$86,000 a year on As COVID-19 descended upon the Charlotte area supplies alone, though its seen a sharp increase in in early March and stay-at-home orders loomed, that spending during the crisis, sometimes spending staff members with the Queen City Needle Exchange as much as $12,000 a week. (QCNE) saw a tough road ahead for their program’s According to CPS executive director participants. Angela Allen, the original plan was to dip The group, run by the Charlotte-based into the organization’s investment fund Center for Prevention Services, curbs the risks with Foundation for the Carolinas to buy for drug users by providing safe access to a property. However, as is the case with supplies such as clean syringes and overdosejust about everyone, COVID-19 changed reversal medication like Naloxone. Despite everything. a lasting stigma in many communities, “While I haven’t lost any grants yet, programs like Queen City Needle Exchange as an executive director I can’t see letting have been proven to not only decrease death go of our nest egg when I know that we counts among the drug-using community and could lose grants, and then we’re talking curb the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C, but to about the choice of paying for a building help direct drug users into recovery programs or paying for my employees and I don’t at their own pace. want to have to let anybody go,” Allen said. For more than two years, QCNE has been “So I made the decision that we just can’t operating out of satellite sites such as Hope buy right now. We’ll have to rent until we Chapel north of Uptown and Carolinas CARE either raise the capital or things get back Partnership in east Charlotte, but with new to some semblance of whatever normal is social distancing requirements coming down going to be.” from local government, those sites became That sounds simple enough. However, impossible to run safely. nothing is simple in the world of a needle Staff knew they needed to make changes, A FEW OF THE SUPPLIES FROM A RECENT QCNE MOBILE RUN. PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN exchange. and fast. “We’re not ahead of it by any means, but we have As Allen expressed in an open letter to community QCNE program coordinator Lauren Kestner unemployment spiking and people losing their jobs, was in Raleigh for a conference as talk of a stay-at- so that’s something that the experts are keeping their worked very hard to curb it and get people Naloxone partners on May 8, as she began looking for land to home order ramped up, and she quickly cut her visit eyes on, and something that we in public safety are and other safe and sterile supplies at this time with lease around Charlotte, she was repeatedly turned these restrictions,” Kestner said. “We’ve had reports, away as soon as landlords learned of her mission. short to return to Charlotte and help her program’s keeping our eyes on.” In times when the folks they serve are at an even but not as many as what MEDIC and CMPD would “We started looking and time after time, landlords participants. “We had to open our site on Friday [March higher risk than usual, the team at QCNE has taken be seeing, and I think it’s because they’re actively would find out what we intended to do and they said, 13] because we had to get people stocked up,” she action. Kestner and fellow program coordinator engaged in these programs, and they’re connected ‘No. We don’t want that kind of activity here,’” Allen recalled during a recent phone call. “We didn’t know Denae Ayers have gone mobile, meeting participants with NARCAN [a brand of Naloxone], they know how told Queen City Nerve. “It doesn’t matter that it’s legal, to respond to the overdose, and they may not be it doesn’t matter that it’s necessary, that it’s saving what the governor was about to put up, but we knew where they are all around Mecklenburg County. For Kestner, the changes have been anything but reporting it but lives are definitely being saved.” people’s lives, they just didn’t want us.” that a quarantine/shelter-in-place was coming, and Over the last two years, the Queen City Needle Allen said she would have expected the pushback we knew that we had to give out three to four weeks ideal, due to the risk it puts her and her team at but also because they make it more difficult to connect Exchange has steadily been making progress along in more well-to-do communities such as Myers Park worth of supplies.” Kestner was well aware of the specific risks that participants with resources. She continues to go out with its partners in the Charlotte Regional Harm or Ballantyne, but she was dealing with landlords — people who use drugs would face during the COVID-19 and deliver supplies every Tuesday through Thursday, Reduction Coalition, but recent events have halted many of them absentee — who own buildings where crisis: the dangers of using alone, not having access to however, because she can’t imagine leaving her its biggest goal for 2020. The team had planned to a lot of her participants live and work: the Woodlawn/ open a wellness center that will serve as a one-stop Tyvola road corridors, the Eastway Drive/Central clean supplies, going through withdrawals with no participants without help.
