ROLLING HOPE

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. -Twice a week, Coleman Cox (Cherokee) drives a white sprinter van full of life-saving supplies along winding rural Oklahoma roads from Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, to Vinita, a town of 5,000 about 70 miles north. It's a hot spot for drug use in the northern part of the reservation.

Cox, who's 38, is the director of the Cherokee Nation Harm Reduction Program, an evidence-based public health strategy designed to mitigate the adverse effects of drug use, such as infectious diseases, overdose, and death. The mobile unit was launched in September 2023 to bring harm-reduction supplies to remote areas of the reservation. Vinita is its first distribution site.

It's an unseasonably hot day for November in Oklahoma. Cox parks the van in the alleyway behind the Vinita Potters Guild, as he does every Tuesday and Thursday. Then he sets up a folding table with black bins of Naloxone, a drug to reverse opioid overdoses, along with testing strips, clean syringes, and wound-care supplies. The mobile unit typically sees 16 repeat community members, he says. Some days, no one comes. It all depends on the patterns of drug use and the drug current drug supply.

https://nativenewsonline.net/rolling-hope