TIME WILL TELL –
Jan. 2025 – An overdose prevention center opening its doors this month in Providence, Rhode Island could offer important insights into how these centers might reduce the harms of opioid addiction in the United States. The center, run by the nonprofit Project Weber/RENEW and funded by money received from legal settlements with opioid makers, is the third such site in the U.S. and the first authorized by a state law.
Whether this approach works to reduce overdose deaths is among the questions researchers will examine through a grant from the National Institutes of Health, which also encompasses two centers that opened in New York City in 2021. Studies conducted at more than 200 overdose prevention centers around the world have consistently shown that these facilities save lives, says Brandon Marshall, the principal investigator for the Providence study. Marshall is a professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health.
