About three years ago, Common Ground Health teamed up with Monroe County’s Department of Addiction Services to address the area’s opioid crisis. With 25 barber shop and hair salon owners now community health educators and peer leaders trained in a variety of community health interventions, it was a natural fit to bring some of them into this important work.
Part of the Get it Done initiative, 14 of those shop owners are distributing Narcan and providing overdose prevention education. When the county launched its “Call to Action” campaign, which includes wide distribution of Narcan—an easily administered nasal spray that can save someone’s life during an opioid overdose—they reached out to those community health educators to help spread the word.
Once again, they stepped up.
Two community health educators, Clarissa (Cee Cee) Davis, owner of DaVine Hair Designs and Ithmar Robinson (Flash), owner of Flash Hair Designs, were both featured in public service announcements about the campaigns.
“I think it’s important to carry the Naloxone, simply because you can save a life,” says Davis, whose husband Ronnie Davis owns Visions Barber Shop and is also a community health educator. “Most of my clients who sit in my chair, takes a Naloxone when they leave the salon.”
The ads have been featured on TV, radio, and social media throughout the county. They are part of a broader effort to raise awareness of Naloxone availability, reduce the stigma around substance use disorder, and share real stories from those affected to build compassion and understanding.
These and other efforts seem to be working. In 2024, Monroe County saw a big shift in the opioid crisis—a 43% drop in opioid-related deaths compared to the previous year. It’s the first time in several years that those numbers have gone down, following a steady rise in overdose fatalities from 2020 through 2023.
“We really need Naloxone in everyone’s hands because there are a lot of drugs going around our community that are fentanyl laced and we don’t know that they are,” says Flash. “I don’t know anybody who hasn’t been impacted—rich, poor, everybody’s been impacted.”