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Students and faculty from the School of Pharmacy recently delivered a presentation on the opioid epidemic to 120 seventh grade students at Windham Middle School.

The presentation was part of the school’s on-going project “Taking Back Maine’s Future.”

“Here in Maine, we have a significant issue with opioids,” commented Pilar Starkey, Ed.D., Windham Middle School science teacher. “If we are able to get these students now to start thinking about solutions, maybe 20 years from now we can solve this. We want them to be learning and focusing on real problems and solving them.”

The opioid epidemic continues to claim lives in Maine at an alarming rate. Maine shattered its previous record for overdose deaths last year when 636 Mainers died from overdoses. That’s an increase of 23%, or 121 people, from the previous year.

�Թϱ���’s School of Pharmacy’s Stephanie Nichols, Pharm.D., BCPP, BCPS, associate professor and a member of the Governor’s Opioid Response Clinical Advisory Committee, along with students Julia Busiere (Pharm.D. ’22) and Rebekah Guay (Pharm.D. ’23), delivered a presentation to students on the dangers of opioid use, the proliferation of high potency opioids, signs of overdose, and stigma reduction.

“I think they are very impressionable at this age,” Busiere said.  “It is a pivotal age in development. I think this generation of young people in general is very curious and very smart. So, providing them with this education, I think they will take it and run with it, educating their friends and their family.”

Guay was impressed with how attentive the students were.

“I was really pleased to see how curious they were and that they were asking questions,” she stated. “A lot of them had answers to questions that we posed. They just seemed to be interested and involved.”

Leaders of “Be the Influence,” a drug prevention coalition from the Windham and Raymond area, contacted Kris Hall, M.F.A., Program Manager, Center for Excellence in Collaborative Education (CECE), to see if �Թϱ��� would get involved in the middle school’s program.

“We reached out to some students and the pharmacy students were a natural match for this,” Hall explained. “Our students are very well trained in their area of expertise and they appreciate the chance to be able to share what they've learned at UNE with others.”

Teachers and administrators at Windham Middle School say they are grateful for the time and effort the �Թϱ��� group put into the presentation.

“One of the things the pandemic experience has reinforced is the importance of community connection,” Starkey stated. “I appreciate the group showing our students that UNE is part of our community.”