P.A.A.R.I.’s recent announcement of grant funding to support fatal overdose prevention efforts in Massachusetts and Maine was recently featured in The Jewish Journal.

P.A.A.R.I. has been awarded a $149,173 grant from the Washington/Baltimore HIDTA, the University of Baltimore and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Combating Opioid Overdose through Community-Level Intervention (COOCLI) grant program. The grant will support P.A.A.R.I.’s One2One: Engagement to Recovery initiative, which empowers police officers and community partners to distribute fentanyl test strip (FTS) kits to those in need, as well as provide referrals to treatment and information about other resources available to those who use drugs and their loved ones.

To fight the opioid epidemic, the Beverly Police Department was among 11 departments, including Methuen, Lynn and Ipswich on the North Shore, that piloted an initiative during the coronavirus pandemic called One2One Engagement to Recovery. The program provides drug users access to fentanyl test strips to avoid a fatal overdose, along with other resources and referrals to treatment and information about resources for both those using drugs and their families.

It’s an initiative of the nonprofit Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative and its research partner, Brandeis University.

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