Six months after Wentworth County launched a second outreach van, county health officials say weekly contacts with people actively using drugs have nearly doubled, an early sign the long-delayed expansion is paying off.
Six months after Wentworth County put a second outreach van on the streets of Lowertown and Cedar Hollow, county health officials say the added coverage has roughly doubled the number of weekly contacts with people actively using drugs, from an average of 40 to nearly 80. Dr. Kwame Asare, director of the Wentworth County Department of Health, called the early results “the clearest sign yet that the second van was worth the years it took to fund.”
The van’s funding came through only after years of council wrangling over how to pay for it, a debate that at one point pitted the outreach program against a competing city arts grant before the two initiatives were ultimately funded through separate revenue sources. Asare said the delay meant the county entered this year already behind where officials had hoped to be.
Doubling coverage, not doubling staff proportionally
The original outreach van, which has operated in Lowertown and parts of Cedar Hollow for several years, is now joined by a second vehicle covering the remainder of Cedar Hollow and extending limited coverage into Riverside Heights on select days. Janelle Osei, the outreach coordinator who runs the second van’s daily route, said the additional vehicle has let the program reach people who previously fell outside either van’s regular path.
“We used to have to choose between covering a wider area thinly or a smaller area consistently,” Osei said. “Now we can do both, and consistency is what actually builds trust. People need to see the same face show up in the same spot enough times before they’ll take a supply kit from you, let alone talk about treatment.”
We used to have to choose between covering a wider area thinly or a smaller area consistently. Now we can do both, and consistency is what actually builds trust.
Janelle Osei, Outreach Coordinator, Wentworth County Department of Health
A volunteer who once needed the van himself
Curtis Boone, a 41-year-old Cedar Hollow resident who has volunteered with the county’s outreach program since completing his own recovery two years ago, now rides along on the second van’s route several nights a week. Boone said the expanded coverage has let him reach parts of Cedar Hollow the original van never had time to visit regularly.
“There were blocks in my own neighborhood the first van just couldn’t get to on a consistent schedule,” Boone said. “Now we’re out there every week instead of every few weeks, and that difference is everything. Consistency is what got me connected in the first place.”
Asare said Boone’s trajectory, from someone the original van first approached to a volunteer helping run the second one, has become something of an informal case study the department points to when making the case for continued funding. “I don’t love reducing Curtis to a talking point, because he’s a person, not a statistic,” Asare said. “But it’s hard to argue with a program when you can point to someone it demonstrably reached.”
Naloxone distribution nearly triples
The department’s six-month data shows naloxone kits distributed through the outreach program have grown from roughly 340 in a typical six-month period with one van to just under 900 with two vans operating, a figure Asare said reflects both increased coverage and growing willingness among residents to accept supplies without judgment. He cautioned that naloxone distribution numbers alone do not directly translate into the county’s overdose death statistics, which are tracked and reported separately.
“I don’t want to oversell six months of data as proof of anything definitive,” Asare said. “What I can say is that more contacts, more naloxone in circulation, and more consistent presence in the neighborhoods that need it most are all directionally the things we’d expect to see before any effect shows up in the annual death count.”
Funding still year to year
Osei said the second van’s funding, secured through a combination of a state grant and a county appropriation, is approved only through the end of the current fiscal year, meaning the program faces another funding decision before the Wentworth County Board of Commissioners in the coming months. Asare said he plans to present the six-month contact and naloxone data to commissioners directly, hoping concrete numbers will make the renewal debate less contentious than the original funding fight.
“I’d like this to be a formality next time instead of a multiyear argument,” Asare said. “But I’ve learned not to assume that just because a program is working, the money to keep it running becomes automatic.”
Boone said he plans to keep volunteering regardless of how the funding debate plays out. “I’ll ride along whether it’s one van or two,” he said. “But I’ve seen what the second van does that the first one alone couldn’t, and I hope the people making that decision have seen it too.”