Who We Are:
The Overdose Crisis Response Fund (OCRF; www.ocrfund.org) is a start-up not-for-profit fund with the mission to save as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible, from overdose.
The OCRF General Fund raises money, and then applies the principle of net present value to prioritize how that money is deployed to reduce overdose fatality. We have no a priori preferences for any particular interventions, geographies, or populations. We are only concerned with what under-funded interventions have the highest probability of saving the most lives, fastest.
Please support our work here: https://www.ocrfund.org/donate
What We’ve Done:
Over the course of its lifespan, the OCRF General Fund has financed the distribution of +100,000 incremental doses of naloxone (i.e. overdose antidote) across at least 14 states. From Sept 2018 to March 2020 we documented 1,734 confirmed overdose reversals with OCRF-funded naloxone through our grantees. After this point we were no longer able to continue collecting these reports due to COVID-related delivery model changes at our grantee orgs. By now, we have to assume that the number of overdose deaths prevented through OCRF General Fund financing is into the many 1000s.
Importantly, a study of 12m follow-up of 76K Medicaid patients who survived an overdose showed that 94% were still alive 1 year after their overdose rescue. So, when someone survives an overdose through the help of OCRF, they don't die a week later of a subsequent overdose...they gain years of time to have a shot of engaging treatment and recovery.
Also, people who access harm reduction services through organizations like those we’ve funded are 5x more likely to seek addiction treatment than people who are never able to access these services. This is largely because harm reduction organizations are frequently the only healthcare access point in their communities where people struggling with addiction actually feel welcomed.
For some highlights of the work we have supported through the OCRF General Fund, please see below…
ARKANSAS
In Little Rock, a small but mighty group of grassroots activists do street outreach, HIV testing, food donations, social service referral, and they pack & ship +10,000 naloxone kits a year all over the state to whoever asks for one. They’ve done all this with $0 Fed or state funding so far. Despite their being the only resource in the state serving people at the highest risk of overdose…they were going to have to shut their doors in December 2021 for lack of funding. OCRF was able to step in to prevent that.
South Carolina
Our funding allowed the only syringe service program in the entire state to go from providing overdose prevention supplies and services from out of the trunk of a car, to rolling out a mobile unit providing overdose prevention and treatment access to the region's most vulnerable populations, wherever they happen to be.
Oklahoma
We supported the founder of the state's first community-based syringe service program to launch Oklahoma's first statewide mail-order naloxone distribution service. This is crucial in a state with such low population density, where a drop-in service model can't reach most of the at-risk population.
(P.S. We’re now working with them to raise funding to purchase and deploy a mobile unit what will be able to reach clients in their own communities. Email colin@ocrfund.org if you want to help. Maybe they’ll name the van after you…)
Alabama
Alabama’s health agencies do not provide, and the state legislature has actually outlawed, evidence-based public health interventions that are advocated by both the CDC and the US Surgeon General. In this environment, we are supporting a truly heroic individual who is operating an overdose prevention program that is serving clients out of her own home.
Invitation to Discuss:
Please contact info@ocrfund.org with any questions. We are completely open to discussing how we work, and to absorbing any criticism. If others have proof of better ways to save as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible, from overdose fatality…we want to know. We are completely open to changing our funding priorities in response to evidence of better opportunities.