Drug Free Duval teams with JTA to teach people signs of an opioid overdose, how to use Narcan

A bus is bringing Narcan training to the community.

It’s through the Jacksonville Transportation Authority’s “Safety on the Move” bus, which turned into a mobile classroom to provide training and free Narcan kits to the public.

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The bus was at Inspire to Rise along Old Timuquana Road on Tuesday.

This initiative is targeting communities with the most opioid overdoses.

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JTA partnered with Drug Free Duval, and they work with other partners to determine high overdose areas in Duval County.

All it takes is 15-to-20 minutes of training and you can learn how to save a life.

“There is a lot of stigma around opioid overdose, let’s be honest, so we just knew if we can bring this in the community and start talking about it, we can reduce that stigma,” Hannah Schaper with Drug Free Duval said.

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The organization has done Narcan training with JTA for a few years now and they started this mobile training because of some overdose incidents on city buses.

“We were like, ‘Let’s train their people, so that they can help people on the bus,’” said Schaper. “But they had this bus that was used during COVID that was used for vaccines but it wasn’t being used for that anymore, so they came to us and said ‘We want to do a Narcan bus.’”

More than 3,339 Duval County residents died of unintentional overdose death from 2016 to 2023, according to city records. From 2018 to 2022, the rate of opioid overdose deaths in Duval County increased by 67%.

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Neighbors like Dan Mahnke, who is a first aid instructor, believe everyone should take this training.

“It was excellent training; it answered the questions that I had,” Mahnke said. “Why not have that additional training.”

The bus will visit two locations every month in Duval County. It will stop at another location toward the end of November.

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