Revive Awareness Day focuses on effort to reduce opioid overdoses, increase naloxone access
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - The last thing Isabella Novotny remembers before overdosing in 2016 is taking morphine and laying down in her bed.
"I was just napping, and that nap was going to be forever," she said.
Her friend found her unconscious.
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"My lips were blue and I was dying in front of her," Novotny said. "She was able to give me the first dose of naloxone and saved my life. If I didn't have that at home, it took five minutes for emergency responders to get there and to start administering IV Naloxone. Without that first dose, I wouldn't be here today," she said.
Novotny has been sober for eight years and made it her life’s mission to help others, and to get naloxone -- which is often distributed under the brand name Narcan -- in the hands of everyone. It’s also the goal of health departments across the state. They and their partners highlighted Revive Awareness Day on Thursday. It’s an effort to raise awareness about the importance of naloxone.
Thursday marked the first Revive Awareness Day. Victoria Siegel died at 18 years of age on June 6, 2015, of an accidental drug overdose. Her name is on the new Florida law designating June 6 Revive Awareness Day.
"I think education is really the biggest thing right now, is just really to get the word out and to do the things through education," Marvin Coleman, VP of Legislative and Community Affairs for Operation PAR, said. "You can minimize the stigma. When you minimize the stigma, people are more receptive to getting help," he said.
Coleman and others said naloxone doesn’t just save people with substance-use disorders.
"We’ve had little toddlers unfortunately pass away on family vacations because they got into fentanyl that was just their residue from a prior trip from another party," Marianne Dean, program manager of the Office of Overdose Prevention in the Pinellas County DOH, said. "There are also individuals in Pinellas County that have been found to overdose because they are in their 70s or 80s. They have a mental decline or a cognitive decline and they might forget they took their medications," she said.
More than 6,000 people died in Florida from opioid overdoses in 2022, according to the Florida Department of Health.
There is a glimmer of good news, though. The DOH says for the first time in a decade, they’re starting to see that number drop slightly. Officials said naloxone in the hands of more people deserves a lot of credit for that. That decrease includes numbers in Pinellas County, which had more than 500 overdose deaths in 2022.
"This just shows the coordination actions of all of our teams here to assist with getting the Narcan out there, getting education and messaging, and keeping the momentum," Dean said.
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That’s why they said everyone should have access to naloxone.
"It’s like an AED or fire extinguisher. We all hopefully have them when we need one and hopefully we never need it, but it's always good to have," Dean said. "Things like fentanyl are everywhere. and being ignorant to it can only hurt. So, it's better to be proactive and prepared than to be reactive and unprepared," she said.
Anyone can get Narcan for free at several locations across the area, including any local health department. The Florida Department of Health also offers free training.
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