Giving more people the power to save lives by Roy

Giving more people the power to save lives by Roy - December 2023 Scholarship Essay

August First. That's when it happened. I got the news a day later. Anne was dead. Fentanyl overdose. I didn’t know what to say. My best friend and I were on the phone, and we were both just silent. “How,” I started. How could anyone I know so well be a victim of this epidemic?

I had heard news stories, especially about the overdose issues in the Bay Area. In ethics class a few months before, I presented a debate around the importance of safe injection sites in New York and Portugal, but it was only meant to be an argumentative response to a current issue. Now this feels personal, as it will to so many more as I grow older. Within days of Anne’s service, I asked my doctor for Narcan naloxone nasal spray and urged my friends to carry their own throughout the day.

I’ve been talking to my friend's mom, an emergency room doctor, about giving presentations to other San Francisco schools about instituting a naloxone distribution program. Nearby Marin County already has a program in place, and some schools have a supply of Narcan but have not distributed it to their students. Education around teen behavior and overdoses to parents and school officials needs to improve. Some parents might think their kids could indulge in more risky behavior knowing Narcan is available to them, but this argument doesn’t hold, as often people don’t know they are taking fentanyl. Carrying Narcan keeps the people around you and your community safe.

As I was applying to colleges, I also researched what nearby communities were doing to combat this epidemic. In an article from Kaiser Health News, only around a third of Colorado districts had enrolled in the state’s Narcan giveaway program, so I would have some work to do if I went to school there. University of Colorado Boulder delivers Safer Night Out Buff Boxes to students, and I would propose Narcan availability in dorms and fraternities. Camden County, New Jersey, arms school bus drivers with Narcan (NBC Philadelphia), which is good thinking.

I was relieved to find that Massachusetts high schools have made Narcan available since 2016, and Boston University Police was the first campus force in the nation to carry Narcan. After Harvard students took data from where ambulance calls were made, they realized that 10% of calls were made around T stops, resulting in all T stops having Narcan available. This is exactly the kind of real world application I’m eager for.

Anne is just one of the reasons why I plan to combine biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences with economics, with the help of this scholarship. This wide range of disciplines will allow me to understand entire populations and prepare me for a career in public policy and global health. Taking classes like Health Economics and philosophy will broaden my understanding of the human mind, so I can help many others so they won’t have to experience the loss of a friend to drugs.