Though International Overdose Awareness Day is Aug. 31, a day of recognition for those who have lost their lives from overdose, the West Side Heroin and Opioid Taskforce works to reduce overdoses on Chicago’s West Side every day.
“There is an international problem with heroin overdoses . . . and we understand it right here on the West Side,” said La Shawn Ford, state representative of the 8th district, during an Aug. 29 press conference at the corner of Central Avenue and Corcoran Place in Austin.
After several speakers shared their personal stories about losing loved ones to overdoses or their expertise working with those using heroin or opioids, over 50 locals walked down the street to artist-led nonprofit alt_ Chicago, where the West Side Heroin and Opioid Taskforce helped organize a fair of over two dozen booths offering health and material resources related to overdose awareness.
At that press conference, speakers touched on the Trump Administration’s possible budget cuts to Medicaid, and how that could affect harm reduction efforts.
About one in every four Illinois residents rely on Medicaid services. Cuts to Medicaid would reduce resources for addiction and overdose resources like mental health education, outreach and recovery services, and availability of medication for withdrawals.
But amid such uncertainty, the West Side Heroin and Opioid Taskforce aims to keep growing by bringing together community-based agencies, health care providers and governmental bodies to address harm reduction, treatment and recovery.
Monday through Friday, the taskforce canvases door-to-door and sets up tables at corners on the West Side where they know that drug dealers and users convene. During tabling, the taskforce and its partners pass out safe-use kits and Narcan, plus immediately direct those who want recovery services to the taskforce’s partners in mobile units on the same corner.
“Once we do the warm handoff, then they continue the work of getting people the recovery that they need,” Pastor Fanya Burford-Berry, director of the West Side Heroin and Opioid Task Force since 2023, told Austin Weekly News. She’s a pastor with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the taskforce is her ministry.
“Our partners started co-locating with us when we do our outreach, or even just develop a system with us so we can call and get people connected the same day,” said Tim Devitt, who’s worked with the taskforce since 2020. “What’s important is, when someone wants to start [recovery], that we are able to do something immediately, that we don’t have to have these long wait lists to get an appointment.”
Many of the organizations that the taskforce coordinates services with were in attendance at the Aug. 29 resource fair.
“We have a hyper-local approach because we know that the people on the West Side know the folks of the West Side, so we can engage our community,” said Burford-Berry, who lost her brother-in-law Skipper and cousin Stephanie to overdoses.
Through this approach, the West Side Heroin and Opioid Taskforce has given out 76,000 doses of Narcan on the West Side since late 2019, averaging nearly 2,000 doses a month. They’ve connected with thousands of people and, since 2020, have referred 690 locals to substance use treatment, including medication-assisted recovery. As of the end of this June, the taskforce has trained over 30,000 people in overdose education and Narcan distribution.
The goal is not only to reach and help those affected by drug use, but also to educate and raise awareness, erasing the stigma against drug use and encouraging those who use drugs to seek help.
“We don’t necessarily believe in abstinence recovery,” said Burford-Berry. “We believe in any positive change.”
Ford said at the Aug. 29 press conference that, while overdose deaths across the country have dropped over 25% since 2023, they have not declined in Chicago, especially among Black men.
Ford is now among the Democratic candidates running for Cong. Danny Davis’s long-time seat in the U.S. House. Davis has announced he will not run for reelection in 2026 and endorsed Ford in July.
West Side Heroin and Opioid Taskforce
Ford convened the West Side Heroin and Opioid Taskforce around 2015, while he sat on the board at Loretto Hospital, to address the rising rate of opioid-related overdoses.
In 2019, Ford asked Prevention Partnership, a nonprofit on the West Side since the 1980s, to start coordinating the taskforce after securing general revenue funds from the state for the group.
“Prevention Partnership, from its inception, was built on a systems approach to prevention, meaning that the whole community needs to get involved when they want to deal with intractable issues,” Lee Rusch, who co-founded Prevention Partnership, told Austin Weekly News. “It isn’t just the responsibility of a specific harm reduction group or prevention group.”
Rusch said Prevention Partnership worked with a representative from a Narcan manufacturer — who told them that Michigan and Ohio have a program where they give Narcan to nonprofits for free — to establish the same program in Illinois, Access Narcan, in 2021. Narcan retails for about $45 for a two-dose box.
Free access to Narcan “is a lifeline because it comes from opioid settlement dollars. We don’t have to rely on the feds,” Rusch said.
Prevention Partnership “has really been a leader in the state,” Ford told Austin Weekly News. “We helped lead the free distribution of Narcan.” But that, he added, has led to much more — “getting the numbers [of overdoses] down, expanding the understanding about Narcan, reducing the stigma of the people that have substance use.”
The West Side Heroin and Opioid Taskforce aims to continue those efforts in the years to come.
Richard Vargas, director of community outreach for the taskforce, said what comes next for the group includes “more training, more services, figuring out other things that we need to do to impact the opioid epidemic and figuring out things that we need to do to impact helping people getting into services.” He added the importance of disseminating “more information that we can put out to save lives, more things that we can do to continue to save lives. That’s what’s important to us.”
