Allegheny County Health Department may aid in bringing more overdose prevention medication to campus 

Free naloxone could soon be available on more college campuses in Allegheny County.

The Allegheny County Health Department began placing the life-saving overdose drug in vending machines in August and is working to distribute more. Under discussion: college campuses, said Ottis Pitts, deputy director of the Bureau of Food Safety, Housing & Policy with the Health Department. 

Pitts said the Health Department and two local universities have identified an increased need for the medication in college residence halls. 

“We want this to serve as a low-barrier way to access this life-saving medication. But this initiative goes beyond the standing vending machines,” Pitts said.

Details of the proposal have not yet been finalized, Pitts said, and he said he could not yet disclose which colleges could be participating in the program. 

Pitts outlined three potential ways to dispense, all of which are already available in the county: stand-up vending machines, capable of holding 150 naloxone kits; newsstand-style plastic boxes, capable of holding 48 kits; and medicine cabinets capable of holding 15 kits. Each kit contains two doses. 

Carnegie Mellon University has already implemented similar machines. 

In spring 2024, the university installed three “Wellness to Go” vending machines. Each machine contains over-the-counter pain relievers and allergy medication as well as condoms, emergency contraceptives, rapid COVID-19 tests, fentanyl test strips and naloxone. 

Safer sex supplies and safer substance use materials are provided by the county health department, according to CMU’s website.

The county health department in August rolled out a plan for seven vending machines holding Narcan, a brand of naloxone, throughout the county, starting with three. However, two of the initial three are no longer operational.

The first machine was placed at JADE Wellness in the South Side, but according to JADE co-founder Alex Perla, it broke within a week of its installation. The county replaced the broken machine soon after, but the replacement also broke, he said. The second machine has not been replaced. 

“The Health Department is in control,” Perla said. “We’re happy to have the machine when it’s ready, but we’re just waiting for it to be fixed.”

A second machine was placed on a public sidewalk outside UPMC Western Behavioral Health in McKeesport, but it was removed due to a zoning issue, according to a news report.

Only the machine outside Tree of Life Open Bible Church in Brookline remains and is actively dispensing naloxone.

However, naloxone is still available for free through direct request from the county’s harm reduction website and in person through JADE Wellness, Perla said. The county also distributes naloxone at events throughout the region, like the one in Market Square on Oct. 23.

Pitts’ team has needed to refill the working machine at least once every two to three weeks, he said.

“As awareness rises, we’re seeing more use [of the machines],” Pitts said.

Anyone can take naloxone from the machines for free. Each dose comes with instructions on how to administer the medication. 

But it’s not clear entirely who is taking it. Pitts described the dispensers as a “tricky public health strategy.” Given the anonymous nature of the machines, it’s difficult to collect and monitor data on who is using them. 

“It’s hard to track, but we’re confident it’s making a difference,” Pitts said. “The Narcan is going somewhere.”

Since 2017, Allegheny County has seen a decline in fatal overdoses. Pitts hopes programs like this can help lower that number faster. 

In addition to naloxone, the new vending machines also include fentanyl test strips, which test for the presence of the powerful synthetic opioid that drives overdoses in the U.S. 

In 2023, 82% of all fatal overdoses in Allegheny County involved fentanyl, according to the county’s opioid dashboard. Pitts said this is the impetus for including fentanyl test strips in the machines. 

“We want people to know the level of risk they’re taking when they choose to consume a substance,” he said.

Vending machines are becoming an increasingly popular approach to get overdose medication directly to the public: As of this spring, at least 33 states and the District of Columbia had the machines, according to an analysis by state health departments by CNN.

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