Using Naloxone to Save Lives

Artist

Julian Handler (2022)

Caption

The motivation for my product came from my desire to respond to the opioid epidemic, fueled by the recent death of one of my friends from elementary school by an opioid overdose. I wanted to focus my product on increasing awareness about naloxone because I was appalled that despite my personal connection to the opioid epidemic, I had not heard of naloxone until Professor Goldie brought it up in class. I hoped to address this concern by raising awareness about naloxone to inspire more people to get it and carry the medication with them to be prepared to save the lives of people they see who are experiencing opioid overdoses.

Artist Lens

I chose undergraduates at Harvard as my target audience because I thought that my personal experience could resonate most strongly with my peers, and I could most easily reach that group with my product. I decided to create a single poster to put up around places at Harvard—such as the houses and Science Center—since naloxone is so beneficial and accessible that one may be convinced to get naloxone just from the information that I put on the one poster. I designed the poster to tell a story of the problem and what people can do about it to prompt people to think that they can make a difference if they make the desired change. I showed my initial design to a doctor who I have shadowed to test it, and he convinced me to replace a fact about low naloxone coverage with the statement "you can save lives" at the top of the poster to hook my audience. 

Moreover, I put a QR code on the poster that takes people to a website I created to give people more information on naloxone and more inspiration to get it. On the home page, I described my story about my friend who died from an opioid overdose and my discovery of naloxone to communicate the feelings that prompted my purchase of naloxone. On the next page, I wrote a brief argument for why people should get naloxone to expand on the points and evidence I included in my poster. I made sure to use data specific to college students and Massachusetts so that my target audience could see how relevant the problem is here, but I also included general data from the U.S. because Harvard students come from all over the country. I added some images to go along with my story to help immerse the reader, but I decided not to include any graphics on this page because I thought that they were unnecessary to support my argument. I also omitted how much it costs to purchase naloxone because I did not want to include any disincentives. I then created a page that describes how to use naloxone with a couple of images to help people visualize the instructions, and the main purpose of this page is to demonstrate how easy it is to save someone's life with naloxone. 

I also linked a video that the aforementioned doctor recorded on how to use naloxone so that my audience can hear from an authoritative source. I finally added a page to the website where people can tell me if I inspired them to get naloxone so that I can publicly measure the impact of my project. I plan to put up my posters at the start of the next semester because I want to wait until as many students are on campus as possible, and at the beginning of the semester, students should have plenty of time to get naloxone at a pharmacy.

Media

Digital

Download Using Naloxone to Save Lives PDF