Portland Fire expands 'life saving' program to underserved East Portland
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A Portland Fire and Rescue program designed to free up emergency resources and help respond to the city's drug crisis isn't going anywhere. In fact, it's expanding.
PF&R's Community Health Assess and Treat (CHAT) launched its initial overdose response pilot program out of Old Town back in January. In February, KOIN 6 News did a ride along with CHAT's Overdose Response Team.
Since then, the CHAT team has added a Medication for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) program. For MOUD, team members connect with people they've previously revived with the medication Narcan and intervene with a follow-up addiction medication called buprenorphine. The buprenorphine reduces withdrawal symptoms and widens the window for recovery.
Though the CHAT program will maintain its current presence in Old Town, they've now moved their headquarters to East Portland, near Southeast Powell and Southeast 124th Avenue. East Portland will also be the focus area of the program's expansion.
The latest fire station will house the CHAT program's nurses, aftercare and overdose response teams.
People in Old Town who've already seen the impacts of the CHAT program gave KOIN 6 their reactions to its progress.
"I overdosed twice and they gave me Narcan twice," said one neighbor who wished to remain anonymous.
"I have seen an improvement in the number of people that are using drugs in the streets. I've seen a reduction in the last six months," said Portland resident Forest Tanier-Gesner.
Funded by Care Oregon and under the same community health program as Portland Street Response, PF&R's CHAT focuses on alleviating the pressure on the local strained emergency system. They respond to low-acuity 911 medical calls in place of firefighters or other first responders.
"At one point, Fire Station 1 was seeing 300 overdoses a month, 10 a day. It was absolutely hammering our system. And our ability to send a two-person rig, as opposed to a four-person fire rig, along with an ambulance, is truly managing resources, life-saving resources," said Portland City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez.
Since launching in 2021, PF&R reports CHAT has responded to more than 11,000 less severe medical calls, diverting patients from the emergency room 35% of the time and reducing demand for ambulance transport by 21%. That's nearly $10 million in savings to the healthcare system.
The program is now enhancing its pilot by connecting people they meet on their overdose calls with addiction medication to help curb withdrawal and increase their window for recovery.
"Once you overdose once, the odds of you overdosing again skyrockets. We can interrupt those and save people's lives — really save people's lives," said Portland Fire and Rescue Deputy Chief of Community Health Stephenie Sullivan.
East Portland is anecdotally known as being a historically underserved part of the community. According to the City of Portland's website, many East Portland neighborhoods share downtown Portland's characteristic of being among the most poverty-stricken areas of the city. However, PF&R said the CHAT team will still have a heavy presence in Old Town as that is considered ground zero for Portland's drug crisis, being the locale of one-third of the city's 7,000 overdose calls last year.