As drug overdoses rise, more help is needed to fight the opioid crisis.

In July 2021, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on an initiative to train 150 community health workers “in providing care and services to those battling substance abuse” through a partnership between Malcolm X College, University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Disability and Human Development, the Gateway Foundation, and the Public Health Institute of Metropolitan Chicago.

Luis Ramirez has been to multiple funerals of friends and relatives who were victims of gun violence, but those did not compare to the trauma he faced when he broke down a door and found the body of his older brother — dead from an opioid overdose.

“He was in our basement in a room with the door locked,” Ramirez, 27, said last week. “Me and my cousin took turns trying to knock the door down, and when we did, we saw him there, still with a needle in his arm. I won’t forget how cold he felt.”

That memory from five years ago has forever imprinted itself in Ramirez’s mind, but it is now also the catalyst for him wanting to work with other people who have been impacted by the opioid epidemic that has ravaged communities nationwide — contributing to record drug overdose deaths during the pandemic.

A new program being offered this fall at Malcolm X College is now helping Ramirez and others like him achieve that goal. The college’s Opioid-Impacted Family Support Program, supported by a $2.1 million federal grant, is helping train future community health workers in providing care and services to those battling substance abuse.

Read the full article published in the Chicago Sun-Times on July 21, 2021 here:
After record year for drug overdoses, Malcolm X College to train community health workers to fight opioid addiction