SOC is committed to educating clinicians, patients and families on the principles of harm reduction, including access to naloxone and overdose education.
As the opioid epidemic has transitioned from prescription to illicit opioids and the rapid growth of fentanyl-based products, the importance of harm reduction strategies has grown.
Better safety education for patients who inject drugs and access to syringe exchange saves lives and protects the health of these vulnerable patients until they are ready to enter treatment.
Access to naloxone and overdose education is a common sense, evidence-based approach to decrease overdose deaths and is endorsed by the Surgeon General, the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association and numerous other organizations.
SOC is a leader in bringing harm reduction principles and practices to hospitals and clinicians.
The consultants of SOC wrote the first medical guidelines championing harm reduction as a pillar of care to address the opioid epidemic. SOC clinicians wrote the first hospital guidelines championing take home naloxone as a new standard of care and Dr. Stader has been successful in writing and passing state laws that help hospitals implement harm reduction practices.
In 2020, SOC founded the Colorado Naloxone Project (CNP), one of the most ambitious efforts in the nation to address the opioid overdose crisis by recruiting Colorado hospitals and emergency departments to distribute naloxone to at-risk patients prior to discharge. The CNP has helped over 100 hospitals throughout Colorado develop and implement take-home naloxone programs, and provided over 10,000 doses of donated naloxone via grants.
Dr. Stader is a well-known national lecturer on harm reduction and advocates for facilitating collaboration between harm reduction agencies and hospitals.
SOC can provide guidance on incorporating harm reduction into any clinical practice setting and is prepared to assist private and public health care organizations in developing and implementing effective, sustainable naloxone distribution and harm reduction programs.