Amid fentanyl crisis, Kansas City, KS, schools move forward with stocking Narcan
The Kansas City, Kansas, school board on Tuesday moved forward with plans to start stocking Narcan, a medicine for treating opioid overdoses, as the metro area has seen a rise in fentanyl-related overdoses and deaths.
The board approved a policy allowing staff to use Narcan in case of an overdose. Board members also are considering entering into an agreement with the Unified Government Public Health Department to stock Narcan in all schools and train staff on how to use it.
The move comes as more Kansas City area districts stock Narcan, the brand name of naloxone, in response to an explosion of overdoses across the country, particularly noticeable among ages 15 to 24 in the Kansas City area. Officials in the Kearney school district, for example, said they saved a student’s life with the medication last fall, just days after receiving a fresh supply of Narcan.
In March, the North Kansas City district lost 16-year-old student Ethan Everley to an accidental fentanyl overdose. Last summer, the De Soto district lost 16-year-old Cooper Davis, who took half a pill and didn’t know it was laced with fentanyl.
The National Association of School Nurses has recommended since 2015 that schools stock naloxone as part of their emergency preparedness plans.
Still, not every Kansas City area district keeps naloxone in stock, according to a sampling of area districts previously done by The Star. One of the last holdouts in Johnson County, the Blue Valley district agreed to start stocking it this summer. Then, the De Soto district in September agreed to make it available.
Earlier this year, the Kansas City Police Department in Missouri announced that accidental overdoses from fentanyl had jumped nearly 150% from 2019 to 2020 in the metro area, most noticeable among teens and young adults.
