Sam Rivera, Executive Director, OnPoint NYC: OnPoint NYC opened and has operated the first recognized overdose prevention centers in the United States since 2021. In addition to safe consumption spaces, OnPoint provides a broad span of safer use education, counseling, supplies, and holistic healing.

In the fall of 2021, as the overdose crisis continued to rage across the United States, the nonprofit harm reduction service provider OnPoint NYC opened two overdose prevention centers (OPCs) in New York City with the approval of the city stakeholders, including the mayor, city health department, police, and prosecutors. The two OPCs operate in different neighborhoods and under different service models: one is a clinical model, the other a peer-led model. In the three years since opening, the OPCs have been used over 149,676 times by over 5,330 unique participants, with staff intervening to reverse over 1,570 overdoses with no deaths. OnPoint NYC employs a comprehensive wrap-around service model, making services such as medications for opioid use disorder, syringe services, peer support, showers, clothing, nutritional meals, and connections to mental health and substance use disorder treatment available to anyone who wants it. This presentation will reflect on the first three years of operating the OPCs, including exploration of the available research and data, lessons learned, and differences between the two OPC sites. The presenter will discuss how OnPoint came to open the first officially recognized OPCs in the U.S., the pressures of the being the first and only sites for three years, and the future of their services and expansion of OPCs to other parts of the U.S. in light of the most recent election outcomes.