Project Lazarus director to discuss opioid overdose prevention for WVU Public Health Dialogues
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The West Virginia University School of Public Health will host Fred Brason for the next installment of its Public Health Dialogues Speaker Series at 12:15 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 7 in Room 1905 of the WVU Health Sciences Center.
Brason is the executive director of the North Carolina-based Project Lazarus, a comprehensive, community-based opioid overdose prevention program. He provides management, education, and tools that medical providers, law enforcement officers, schools, and communities can use to tighten supply, reduce demand, and provide harm reduction to save lives from the misuse, abuse, and diversion of prescription opioid drugs.
The Project Lazarus public health model is based on the idea that drug overdose deaths are preventable and that communities are ultimately responsible for their own health. There are five model components, including community activation and coalition building, monitoring and epidemiologic surveillance, prevention of overdoses through medical education and other means, use of rescue medication to reverse overdoses by community members, and evaluation of project components. The last four steps operate in a cyclical manner with community advisory boards playing the central role in developing and designing each aspect of the intervention.
The Public Health Dialogues Speaker Series is sponsored by the Office of Public Health Practice and Workforce Development within the WVU School of Public Health. Doors will open in the Health Sciences Center at noon and Speaker Series is expected to run until 1:30 p.m. The series is free and open to the public.
Those interested in attending should RSVP at SPH-Dialogues@hsc.wvu.edu by Dec. 2 to reserve a complimentary lunch.