Overdose Awareness Day 2023
Each year, on August 31, Southwest Washington Accountable Community of Health (SWACH) convenes partners for an event with a crucial purpose: ending opioid overdoses. Overdose Awareness Day, which is celebrated and honored across the nation, is a unique opportunity to remember loved ones lost to overdose, connect community members to essential resources, and ultimately raise awareness.
Overdose Awareness Day centers three important goals: ending overdose, ending stigma, and ending shame. These aims play a vital role in normalizing the conversation surrounding overdose awareness and ensuring that resources for harm reduction are readily available in our communities.
This year’s event, hosted at the OO Howard House, provided Narcan (naloxone training) and provided connection to recovery services, care coordination support, and other value community-based organizations.
Overdose Awareness Day is part of a broader effort to address the opioid epidemic in our region. SWACH works closely with partners across Clark, Klickitat, and Skamania counties to provide policies, resources and programing to connect community members to recovery and harm reduction resources, education, and additional support. In 2022, we launched five Narcan dispensing vending machines across the region, hosted by partner organizations.
SWACH is grateful to our partners for their dedication to Overdose Awareness Day, and their larger commitment to address overdose awareness in our region. Their work plays a large part in saving lives from overdose in Southwest Washington.
