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Home / 2019 / November / 21 / Free naloxone training program offered at UBC Okanagan

Free naloxone training program offered at UBC Okanagan

November 21, 2019

Ariel Smith, a second-year medical student, recently launched Okanagan Naloxone Training and provides free workshops on how to deal with an opioid overdose.

Ariel Smith, a second-year medical student, recently launched Okanagan Naloxone Training and provides free workshops on how to deal with an opioid overdose.

Medical student hosts opioid overdose prevention workshop

What: Free naloxone training and education workshop
Who: Southern Medical Program student, volunteers with Okanagan Naloxone Training
When: Monday, November 25 at 6 p.m.
Where: UBC Okanagan, room RHS 260, Reichwald Health Sciences Centre, 1088 Discovery Ave., Kelowna

Ariel Smith, a Southern Medical Program student at UBC Okanagan has seen first-hand the impacts of the opioid overdose crisis on Okanagan communities.

During the height of BC’s public health emergency in 2016, Smith volunteered as part of the naloxone training team with Helping Out People Exploited (HOPE) Outreach—an organization that supports homeless and exploited women in downtown Kelowna and Vernon.

For a year and a half, Smith visited homeless shelters and downtown locations. There, using naloxone kits, she trained some of the most vulnerable populations how to prevent opioid overdoses and save lives. Naloxone, if used promptly, can reverse the effects of an overdose from narcotics such as fentanyl or OxyContin.

While volunteers made great strides in education and training in the downtown cores, Smith quickly realized the general public was still largely unaware of the risk factors and how they could potentially help in an emergency.

“Through conversations with family and friends, I recognized a huge knowledge gap still existed in our community,” says Smith. “Especially, considering the majority of opioid overdose deaths in BC happen to people living inside a private residence.”

Now in her second year of studies at UBCO, Smith recently launched Okanagan Naloxone Training as part of the Faculty of Medicine’s FLEX (flexible and enhanced learning) course.

In partnership with HOPE Outreach, Smith offers free naloxone training sessions to people, businesses and volunteer organizations in the Okanagan.

“There is still a large stigma associated with opioids and naloxone training,” says Smith. “In our workshops, we create a safe learning environment for people to ask questions, learn to recognize the signs of an overdose and practice with real equipment.”

Smith is organizing an event at UBCO on November 25. Each participant receives hands-on training, a certificate of completion and a free naloxone kit. This event is free and open to the public. To register, email: hello@oknaloxone.ca

For more information about Okanagan Naloxone Training, visit: oknaloxone.ca

Media Contact

Patty Wellborn
Media Relations Strategist
University Relations

The University of British Columbia
Okanagan campus
Tel: 250 317 0293
E-mail: patty.wellborn@ubc.ca

Content type: Media Advisory
More content from: Southern Medical Program

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About UBC Okanagan

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning founded in partnership with local Indigenous peoples, the Syilx Okanagan Nation, in whose traditional, ancestral and unceded territory the campus resides. The most established and influential global rankings all consistently place UBC in the top five per cent of universities in the world, and among the top three Canadian universities.

The Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world in British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. For more visit ok.ubc.ca.

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We respectfully acknowledge the Syilx Okanagan Nation and their peoples, in whose traditional, ancestral, unceded territory UBC Okanagan is situated.

 

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