Year Two: Findings from OnPoint NYC’s 2024 Impact Report
In 2021, OnPoint NYC made history by opening the first publicly sanctioned Overdose Prevention Centers (OPC) in the United States.
These efforts have paid off – our East Harlem and Washington Heights OPCs have directly saved hundreds of lives through overdose interventions, and provided life-changing connections to medical care, mental health support, case management, and treatment services.
In our first year of operations, we worked to establish OPC services, learn our communities, and conduct outreach. In the second year of operating these centers, we were able to build on this work to finesse our service delivery, deepen relationships with our participants, and connect them to essential and wrap-around care in our buildings.
Our new Impact Report details lessons learned, important findings, and the impact of our work during our second year of operation (2023-2024.)
In our second year of operation, we saw that many community members continue making OnPoint NYC’s Overdose Prevention Centers a part of their regular routine.
This indicates a growing trust in our services, a larger diversion of public drug use, and added opportunities for our community members to connect to our wrap-around services:
- The proportion of participants who visited the OPC daily nearly doubled compared to the previous year — indicating the need for these services, and the trust that has been built with those in the communities we serve.
- Staff deepened their relationships and built rapport with participants to better provide individualized care, promote stabilization, and make connections to care
- In our second year, our staff intervened in 683 overdoses. We have been able to learn from past experience to better prioritize participant-centered OPC care.
- Our approach to reversing overdoses has become nimbler, more nuanced, and more effective – from recognizing early signs to modulating naloxone dosage. We have developed an overdose protocol, managed by staff trained in advanced clinical techniques, that allows us to treat participants effectively – and provide most care in-house. This has resulted in less EMS calls and better participant outcomes.
The ability to test drugs and monitor trends such as contaminants in the drug supply has allowed us to better tailor service to participant needs and provide necessary education.
OnPoint NYC’s Wellness Hubs in East Harlem and Washington Heights both offer high-quality drug checking, in partnership with NYC’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
These services are not only used by participants to test their supply, but the findings are also used to inform our staff about new changes and trends. With these findings, we can adjust our service delivery at each location to be responsive, culturally competent, and effective in building rapport with community members – for example:
- When xylazine was introduced into the drug supply in Washington Heights in Year 2 of our operations, the new substance changed usage patterns and participant behavior – from greater sedation in participants, to an uptick in mixing stimulants and depressants to counteract those effects.
- Fentanyl is a short-acting substance, so its presence in the drug supply indicates an increase in syringe litter in outside areas.
By having the awareness of these issues, we can stay on top of these shifts and adapt both our center and community-based services to provide responsive and informed care.
OnPoint NYC’s wrap-around services – clinical care, mental health counseling, case management, and more – foster stabilization and healing in a supportive, loving environment.
Our participants addressed their daily needs at our Drop-In Centers, received harm reduction education, benefited from mental health counseling and holistic services, received medical treatment, and were connected to recovery programs:
- In our second year, we showed a remarkable increase in connecting participants to this care: 83% of OPC participants were connected to other services – a 12% increase over the previous year.
- Illustrating a demand and interest in wellness, engagement in our mental health counseling services tripled, and an increased amount of participants received medical care
- 1 in 7 participants receiving wrap-around services received services related to buprenorphine – medically assisted treatment to reduce or quit opioid use.
This illustrates that the longer that people are engaged in OPC services, the more likely they are to engage in other kinds of care and treatment – and make tangible positive impacts on their quality of life. This demonstrates the significant long-term impact of OnPoint NYC’s work, and the power that harm reduction can have on our communities.
