University of Missouri - Saint Louis

10/07/2026 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/07/2026 14:56

First Alert 4 highlights Addiction Science Team’s work distributing naloxone across Missouri

First Alert 4 highlights Addiction Science Team's work distributing naloxone across Missouri

by UMSL Daily | Oct 7, 2026

The segment showed how the team's work is helping to fight the opioid epidemic and save lives across the state of Missouri.

Donald Otis, an overdose prevention coordinator with UMSL's Addiction Science Team, was featured in a segment on First Alert 4 about the team's work distributing naloxone across Missouri. (Screenshot)

In recent years, naloxone has become one of the predominant tools used to fight the opioid epidemic across the United States.

Getting the overdose reversal medication - commonly known by the name brand Narcan - into the hands of those who need it can be the difference between life and death. And in Missouri, the University of Missouri-St. Louis Addiction Science Team is building a naloxone distribution pipeline to get the life-saving drug into as many hands as possible.

Earlier this week, First Alert 4 featured UMSL's Addiction Science Team in a segment that shows how the team uses grant funding, including opioid settlement funds from Big Pharma payouts, to distribute naloxone and other resources across the state of Missouri.

The story charts the growth of the Addiction Science Team - a division of the Missouri Institute of Mental Health - over the past five years, from an operation run out of a single room to distributing naloxone and other resources to all 114 counties in Missouri. In 2025 alone, teams across the state distributed nearly 640,000 kits - almost 1.3 million doses and nearly double the previous year.

"There's not a county in the state of Missouri that we actually don't touch," Donald Otis, one of the team's overdose prevention coordinators, said in the segment.

As First Alert 4 noted, that work has tremendous impact. Missouri saw fatal overdoses plummet from nearly 2,000 in 2023 to just over 1,200 in 2025.

"I don't think we can put a price tag on it," Otis said. "There's nothing that we do here that I can honestly put a tag on… It's a feeling. It's passionate. I believe in what we do."

UMSL and its Addiction Science team have played a central role in Missouri's response to the opioid epidemic for the past decade. In 2016, Rachel Winograd, now an associate professor with a dual appointment in UMSL's Department of Psychological Sciences and MIMH, was named the principal investigator for the Missouri Opioid/Heroin Overdose Prevention and Education Project. A year later, the Missouri Department of Mental Health launched the Opioid State Targeted Response project after receiving a $20 million federal grant, with Winograd serving as the project's director.

In addition to helping increase the availability of naloxone across the state, the Addiction Science Team has also been able to identify gaps that make it challenging for individuals to access the treatment they need, including transportation and requirements by clinics that patients have lockboxes for medication.

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