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Hi listeners, it's Lindsay Smith Rogers.

On July 10th, 2025, there was a mass overdose event in Baltimore City's Penn North neighborhood.

Thanks to a swift and coordinated response, the city and various partnering organizations managed

to contain the event and not a single death occurred. Dr. Leticia Jaraza, Baltimore City's

deputy mayor of Health and Human Services, and Sarah Whaley, Executive Director of Overdose Response, tell me about what happened that day, what they learned from the response, and why overall, this is a story of hope. Let's listen. Dr. Lettisha Jarazza and director Sarah Whaley, thank you so much for joining us on public health on call. In July, there was a mass

overdose event that occurred in Baltimore in the Penn North neighborhood. Dr. Jarazzo, would you tell us a

little bit about what happened? Sure, sure. So I will never forget it because we were in a bunch of

meetings. I feel like Sarah and I might have even been in the same meeting. And a lot of our team members

were getting notifications from different agencies, some at the federal level, some other partners, that there

were multiple overdoses in the Penn North neighborhood. So I think one advantage was that we kind of

had a lot of people getting the same message from different places, and so it was concerning.

And I think it immediately made us jump to action.

And Director Whaley, do you want to tell us a little bit about Penn North and about what was going on at the time?

Yeah, so we got all the messages, as Dr. Jarza said, and our teams quickly responded. So the immediate response was to address the medical needs of those who had overdosed, and that was

really led by the Baltimore City Fire Department.

The Baltimore City Police Department was also on scene.

A lot of us then deployed to the area, and while the immediate response to those with immediate

medical needs was happening, teams of outreach workers and other city agencies began to quickly

...