A new app from the Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership launched in late February. ReviveARwas designed as a public tool to educate more Arkansans about drug overdoses.
Kirk Lane is the director of the Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership and the former Drug Director for the state of Arkansas. He said the app is meant for family, friends and anyone else who may need to help someone at risk of an opioid overdose.
“So you got families resources in there for dealing with grief,” Lane said. “Or family resources about how to talk to your loved one, or how to administer Naloxone or how to report that you administered naloxone.”
Other than step by step audio and video guides on how to use naloxone, a medication that can reverse an overdose, Lane said the app also offers contact information on treatment and recovery providers, in-app emergency contacts and updated statistics on drug overdoses from the state department of health.
“All those resources there we have them in English, Spanish, and soon to be Marshallese,” He said.
The partnership was founded by the Arkansas Municipal League and the Association of Arkansas Counties in 2022 as a way to manage and disperse funds that were awarded to the state, counties and cities from opioid settlements. And that money is helping to fund this app, among other drug prevention and treatment resources.
“We get so many questions from citizens and parents and loved ones wanting resources about what we're doing,” Lane said. “So we wanted to be very transparent about the dollars that we're putting, the programs that we're helping to develop. And we wanted to have that resource in the palm of somebody's hand.”
Lane believes education is a major component of helping stop opioid-related deaths.
“We're starting to see some reductions in overdose deaths,” he said. “But in those deaths, we're starting to see fentanyl increasing, even though our overdose deaths are going down, so that shows that the overall effort of collaboration, education, partnerships with the media, different things that are going out there and getting resources and tools to people is working.”
The number of drug overdose deaths in Arkansas reached more than 450 in 2022, according to the most recent numbers from the state’s crime lab. Nearly 57 percent of those overdose deaths were related to Fentanyl.
Staci James is the executive director of HOPE Movement Coalition, a nonprofit that helps the family members of overdose victims. She started the organization after the death of her son, Hagan.
“And the incentive for starting it was that there was nothing in place for families that had gone through a loss like this,” she said. “Stigma oftentimes will judge an individual by their cause of death. And then they judge the families by that cause of death. And so we set out to create a community of understanding and acceptance.”
James, who has been involved with the partnership since its inception, said the input of family and others left in the wake of an overdose death led to the development of the ReviveAR app. She says if this tool had been available when her son was struggling, the outcome might have been different.
“I didn't have support personally, to be able to talk to my child,” James said. “So this app does that. It gives you those tell-tale signs of someone that's struggling. It shows you resources on how to walk hand in hand with your child.”
She said the app can also help create a wider safety net by educating more people on how to spot and handle an overdose.
“So that's the beauty of this app,” she said. “That every Arkansan will have all of the information that they need, in order to help someone to prevent any of this ever happening...And that's going to stop stigma and that ultimately, is what will end the epidemic.”
James notes that that, specifically, is different about this app and a lot of the state’s new programs going toward the opioid epidemic. She said the effort is to destigmatize drug use. Lane said previous tactics focused too much on criminalizing drug use and drug addiction, which he said often made the problem worse.
“I think the biggest threat right now, to me is stigma,” he said. “In the past, we've always criminalized anything to do around drugs. [If] we start looking at drug abuse as a disease... we take the stigma out of it, and then people want to work together and try to solve it.”
Lane said the partnership is putting its money in that direction. In total, the state of Arkansas has been awarded $430 million dollars in opioid-related litigation since 2016. Lane said the partnership has used 23 million of that for prevention and treatment projects, and the group expects to receive some 300 million dollars for projects over the next 12 to 15 years.
James hopes that funding will change people’s understanding of the opioid epidemic.
“With the prevalence of young people, 14 to 18, that are dying daily because of these fake pressed pills,” she said. “There's a sense of urgency that every parent, every educator, they need to know... kids are going to experiment. 30 years ago, they were going to get into mom and dad's liquor cabinet. Today it doesn't look the same and unfortunately, with fentanyl involved, they don't get to learn from their mistakes. They die from them.”
The ReviveAR app is available now for free in through the apple and google app stores.
