By Trish Svoboda

The Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas has been awarded a $200,000 grant to distribute naloxone to inmates in correctional facilities across four Southeast Kansas counties, including Cherokee, Crawford, Bourbon, and Labette. The goal is to help reduce prisoner overdose deaths.

Eric Thomason, the center’s vice president of behavioral health said in an announcement the funds recovered from pharmaceutical companies are being distributed by the Kansas Fights Addiction program as part of civil settlements.

Naloxone, commonly known by its brand name Narcan, is an antidote that blocks the effects of opiates on the brain. It does not work with other overdosed drugs.

In 2020 at Crawford County Jail a correctional medication-assisted treatment program was launched by The Community Health Center of Southeast and has since become part of the center’s Correctional Health program, making it one of the first in the state.