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WILKES-BARRE — Harrison Ferrow handed out T-shirts with a grin as he almost subtly suggested an optional donation, nudging students to pry open their wallets and pull out a few bills.
“My uncle started with prescription medication and transferred to illegal drugs. He passed,” Ferrow said when asked of his own reasons for helping organize Wilkes University’s second annual Opioid Epidemic Awareness Walk Thursday morning.
That uncle wasn’t particularly close and his death was quite a while ago, Ferrow noted, but it stuck with him.
The main reason to get involved in the walk organized by the Nesbitt School of Pharmacy, though, was his own field of study. Ferrow is in the fourth year of a six-year pharmacy degree program, and he said those in his future profession have an important role to lay in curbing the opioid epidemic that has swept the country.
While awareness was the primary goal of the walk that lured students, faculty and staff, there was a bonus: Any money donated goes toward purchasing Naloxone — a life-saving drug that counteracts the impact of opioid on the body — for the Wilkes-Barre Fire Department.
Which explains why department Chief Jay Delaney showed up in full uniform. Delaney has been outspoken about the need for action combating the epidemic, and in talking about the value of events like this, he pulled out a paper showing the number of Naloxone applications his department has done: 58 in 2015, 19 in 2016, 410 in 2017 and 311 in 2018.
Last year’s downward trend was a good sign, he said, sharing data not yet widely publicized: “For the first quarter of this year, we had 26.” He stressed that doesn’t mean the final rate will be four times that (104), because the use varies quickly and could spike any given month. But “it’s a positive trend.”
He credited the decline to broad efforts at “all levels of government,” and to work done by the pharmacy students here and other local organizations, work that gets the word out: This is not confined to any demographic, it spans the ages and economic situations. Delaney pulled out another sheet of paper showing the department has administered Naloxone to people ranging from age 24 to 66.
“The students involved here are letting actions speak louder than words,” Delaney said.
Dylan Fox, the head organizer for the pharmacy schools’ Generation RX Team which organized the walk, said they raised $425 last year. He echoed Ferrow’s belief that the future pharmacists of the school have a unique place in saving lives form opioid abuse, thanks to a state law that allows anyone to walk into a pharmacy and ask for Naloxone.
“We can play a huge role in dispensing Naloxone,” he said.
Soon after, students and staff — many of whom had grabbed a shirt, dropped a donation and headed indoors to stay warm — gathered for the walk, heading along River Street, crossing the Market Street Bridge, circling the Kirby Park pond and returning.
