We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessica Geschke a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jessica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
In January I shared about my journey of the creation of the Overdose Aid Kits. This past year, in March, I had a defining moment in my career. My children and I had traveled to Las Vegas to attend the wedding of my best friend, Ryan Hampton. We were eating dinner during the rehearsal dinner and while Ryan and his partner Sean had a strict “no work” talk in place, I couldn’t help but take the chance to boast about the Overdose Aid Kits with the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Mental Health and Substance Use at SAMSHA, Tom Coderre who was present at dinner with us. While chatting up the OAK boxes with him, I was overheard by a man named Chris Thrasher, also present, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Substance Use Disorders and Recovery at the Clinton Foundation. Chris took a very large interest in our OAK program and asked to set up a phone call with me that following week to discuss the Kits more in depth. He wanted to know if my current employer would be interested in transitioning the program from a Wisconsin based initiative to a national initiative! We had that phone call the following week and as of August 1, 2023, I now work for the Clinton Foundation, creating a National movement to install OAK boxes across the United States of America.
In September of this year, the Clinton Foundation did something amazing and I was able to be a part of it. From 2019 to 2021, drug overdose deaths in the state of Georgia increased by 55.9 percent, driven in no small part by the continued and tragic rise of opioid overdose deaths. Georgia is simply a snapshot of a nationwide epidemic that affects countless lives, families and communities each year.
Those who are impacted by such a disease know that addiction affects everyone who is close to the struggling individual – parents, children, spouses, coworkers, fellow members of their place of worship. It can often take a community to help someone into recovery, including doctors, spiritual leaders, family members, and mental health professionals.
So, in September 2023, The Clinton Foundation’s Overdose Response Network (where I work) launched Mobilize Recovery Across Georgia, a travelling bus tour that crossed the state of Georgia during National Recovery Month. Over 800,000 Georgians are living in long-term recovery from a substance use disorder and Mobilize Recovery Across Georgia was designed to bring those Georgians together to celebrate recovery, educate individuals on harm reduction and recovery resources, and connect members of the community. This engaging and uplifting bus tour was designed to bring together Georgia policy makers, local officials, and the 800,000-strong recovering Georgians.
During this tour, we traveled 25k miles across GA, hosted 22 Narcan trainings, attended 23 Rallies, conducted 21 Proclamations stops, had 44 Proclamations given. We donated 96 OAK boxes to GA area schools, recovery community agencies, legislators, city halls, Mayors, city council members and a comedy club!! My OAK boxes, now under the umbrella of the Clinton Foundation, were dispersed all over GA on the bus tour!! We also met with over 7k people in-person, supplied 1,296 doses of Narcan, 600 fentanyl testing strips and made special stops at two college campus, the Carter Center, Nicks New Beginnings, a comedy show and the 2023 Recovery Month Luncheon with The Georgia Council for Recovery,
I was able to participate in all this greatness because of one conversation, one defining moment, at my best friend’s wedding that changed my life and my career for the better.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
In June 2019, I worked with a company called Serve You Rx to create a pilot program to make Narcan more accessible in the state of Wisconsin. Through that initiative, 25 boxes containing the lifesaving drug Narcan were installed in areas identified as “hot zones” due to repeated incidences of overdoses occurring in or near those locations.
Serve You Rx saw a need to expand efforts outside of Wisconsin and we decided to form a partnership between my nonprofit organization Start Healing Now and the company Serve You Rx to grow the initiative into what is now known as the Overdose Aid Kit or OAK Program. From 2019-2023, Serve You Rx and Start Healing Now work with governments, businesses, and more to install OAKs in their communities. The Narcan in each OAK is available for anyone to take, no questions asked, to use in an onsite emergency or to keep in their first-aid kit for future use.
The goal: to place life-saving resources on-site at businesses throughout communities in Wisconsin that have repeated incidences of opioid overdose.
Through the O.A.K. Program, fully equipped kits are available for purchase or through donations that contain:
Naloxone nasal spray (brand name NARCAN®)
A breathing mask and gloves
Instructions on how to administer the drug
Information about resources for treatment and recovery support
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One lesson I had to unlearn was absolute sobriety. In 2001, when I began my internship during college, we were taught that our patients should have absolute sobriety while in treatment. If they came into programming under the influence or having used substances the night before, it was an automatic dismissal from programming. This killed people. Many patients were struggling so terribly and our answer was to kick them out of treatment? The very thing that they needed most during that difficult season of their life? I unlearned this lesson when I began working more in-depth in the prison setting and with our unhoused folks. So many of these individuals shared their stories of loss as well as frustration of a system that seemed to be broken. They reached out for help and often were met with so much hate and stigma. I knew at that time that I needed to rethink how we help people, how we keep them alive long enough to find their path to recovery, whatever that path may look like. I support all pathways to recovery, as long as the person is happy, healthy and alive.
If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?
If I could go back, would I choose the same profession? I honestly do not know. I love my job, helping people seems to come naturally for me. I love that my invention of the Overdose Aid Kits are out and in the public and I can walk into any business and see one of my kits on a wall. It gives me so much pride. But, this line of work is heartbreaking. It’s also terrifying. The vast majority — or nearly 1,300 — of Wisconsin’s opioid related-deaths in 2021 involved synthetic opioids, and in most cases that was fentanyl. Our high school children don’t stand a chance against this deadly drug. Nationally, adolescent overdose rates are up 133% over the last two years and over 100 children have died inside our public schools in the last ten years from overdoses. I look at these statistics and some days, I feel helpless. When we have legislators that won’t pass bills to help support life saving measures in our high schools or police officers who won’t carry narcan, it feels like we are fighting an uphill battle. I don’t feel like I choose this profession, it choose me. I’m a family member of someone who has struggled with an addiction and because of that, I took those experiences and choose to make a positive impact in the world that I live in.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.starthealingnow.org www.clintonfoundation.org https://mobilizerecoveryacrossgeorgia.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/jessicageschke?igshid=YTQwZjQ0NmI0OA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/overdoseaidkit www.facebook.com/StartHealingNow2022
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/jessica-geschke-4117a6219
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MobilizeRecoveryAcrossGeorgia
- Other: [email protected] is my email
Image Credits
SUBCULTURE FILMS 203.444.7395 [email protected] https://www.sbcltrfilms.com/