Isa Cruz

Last week, the College installed Narcan kits in all residence halls through a multi-departmental initiative to expand access to naloxone, a medicine that can reverse opioid overdoses. The kits contain a nasal spray of Narcan—a brand of naloxone—that was previously available to students only through the Office of Safety and Security or EMS services. The medication was approved for over-the-counter use by the FDA last year.

Director of Health Services Christine Mahoney explained that the initiative aims to raise awareness around naloxone and overdoses by increasing the accessibility of Narcan.

“We’re continuing to talk about other places on campus where maybe it should exist,” Mahoney said. “Most of the evidence really supports having Narcan where people live, because that tends to be statistically where most overdoses happen. And so that was sort of a focus at the beginning of this project.”

The program is a collaboration between Maine Access Points and the Bowdoin offices of Residential Life, Safety and Security, Facilities, the Department of Finance and Health Services, including Physician Assistant Julie Gray, who started the initiative. Maine Access Points, an organization that provides overdose prevention education and naloxone distribution, donated the initial supply of Narcan currently in all residence halls.

“It really couldn’t have gone through without everybody being a part,” Mahoney said. “We had a lot of support from the Department of Finance. It was really just such a great example of what can be done with collaboration across campus and across departments.”

Mahoney explained that naloxone has been safely used for over 50 years, and its nasal spray version requires no formal training, EMT license or medical certification to administer. Health Services will monitor the boxes to ensure they are fully stocked and none of the medicine is expired.

“The whole idea of nasal Narcan is that you don’t have to be trained at all. It’s easy enough to use in the moment if you have never even seen what it looks like. The idea was to make awareness about where it exists, so that if there’s concern, you can use it, [and even] if you mess it up, most likely, it’s gonna work,” Mahoney said.

To administer Narcan to a suspected overdose victim, the user should spray a dose into one of the victim’s nostrils and call emergency services, according to the Mayo Clinic. If the victim does not regain consciousness after two minutes, a second dose should be sprayed into the other nostril.

An important aspect of Bowdoin’s Narcan initiative goes beyond accessibility to confront the stigma surrounding opioid overdoses and naloxone use. As the nationwide opioid epidemic worsens, Mahoney noted public health efforts have shifted from solely preventing addiction to acknowledging the prevalence of opioids and trying to mitigate its negative effects.

“There’s more and more data about the safety and efficacy of using Narcan, and in general, the whole approach to the opioid epidemic has shifted from promoting a prevent-and-cure approach to recognizing and reducing harm,” Mahoney said. “It’s called a harm reduction model.”

Sam Koegler ’26, co-leader of the Bowdoin Public Health Club (BPHC), emphasized the importance of the initiative. Last semester, BPHC led a naloxone administration training in collaboration with Maine Access Points.

“There’s an approach to address the stigma around drug use and addiction and to teach people ways they can respond to that situation without prejudice and without causing further harm in order to help the person experiencing the event,” Koegler said.

The availability of Narcan on campus, combined with ongoing education, is designed to ensure students feel empowered to act in an emergency.

“It’s a little bit relieving to know that there are the resources [when] you need to respond quickly and safely,” Koegler said. “Having that accessibility is a really great thing.”

The BPHC plans to hold another naloxone administration training for students interested in learning more about naloxone or the harm reduction approach to the opioid epidemic.

Mahoney hopes the initiative will normalize Narcan and that students will not be afraid to use the drug when necessary.

“It’s really just knowing that it exists and that it’s going to be the most powerful tool. It’s sort of normalizing that, ‘Oh yeah, there’s Narcan on the wall,’” she said.