The overdose crisis deeply impacts the humanity of our city – this is an undeniably apparent in the South Bronx’s HUB, Staten Island, and throughout NYC. Today, I joined community leaders and harm reduction service providers to discuss human centered public health challenges and its impact on the area’s economic development. My Wellness NYC Plan to address the opioid crisis is very clear:
- I call on Comptroller Brad Lander to address calls of advocates to launch an inquiry into how NYC has been spending over $150M of NYS Opioid Settlement Fund money.
- The City must immediately deploy resources to on the ground service providers to create multifaceted wellness centers which integrate harm reduction principles.
- H+H must integrate harm reduction and overdose prevention units as part of their triage to decrease emergency room wait times, save lives, and ensure individuals are connected to competent long term care.
- Public safety measures must be taken to stop the increase of fentanyl and other illicit drugs in NYC.
- We must organize providers, agencies, community members, and elected officials for quarterly action meetings with on demand results similar to a modernized COMP Stat System.
- Implement annual impact audits to measure success tied to dollars and empower results oriented providers.
The people of NYC deserve better than our existing broken system.
We can clean up our streets, end preventable deaths, and give people their lives back all at the same time.
