Nuestra Casa, Nuestra Comunidad: Connecting Communities with Overdose Prevention Resources

Written by Esmeralda Menjivar, OMS-II, OPC Community Outreach Sub-Chair

The Overdose Prevention Committee (OPC) brought vital harm reduction education to Nuestra Casa Recovery Home, a facility dedicated to supporting Spanish-speaking individuals on their recovery journey from substance use disorders.

Leading the committee’s efforts was Esmeralda Menjivar, OPC Community Outreach Sub-Chair, alongside fluent Spanish-speaking student volunteers Emmanuel Martinez-Cortez (OMS-II) and Rudy Alvarez (OMS-II) from California Health Sciences University College of Osteopathic Medicine (CHSU-COM).

The event marked OPC’s first educational workshop conducted entirely in Spanish, helping make overdose prevention information clear and accessible to participants.

The OPC team provided hands-on, interactive training on recognizing the signs of an opioid overdose, administering life-saving intranasal naloxone (Narcan), and using fentanyl test strips as a harm reduction tool to identify the possible presence of fentanyl in substances.

Delivering the entire session in Spanish created a uniquely interactive environment in which residents were highly engaged and eager to ask questions about opioids, overdose prevention, and substances they had encountered throughout their lives. The opportunity to discuss these topics in their primary language fostered open dialogue, deeper understanding, and meaningful participation. Nuestra Casa staff thanked the committee for sharing practical information in an approachable, supportive setting and noted how meaningful it was for residents to learn these skills in Spanish.

By offering overdose prevention education in Spanish, OPC put harm reduction into practice by meeting residents where they are and sharing practical tools for recognizing and responding to an overdose. The overwhelmingly positive response to this inaugural Spanish-language workshop underscored the need for culturally and linguistically responsive education within recovery communities.

Following the success of the event, leadership at Nuestra Casa Recovery Home invited OPC to return every two months to deliver this essential training to each new cohort of residents entering the program. This ongoing partnership will help ensure that individuals in recovery continue to have access to the information, resources, and confidence needed to prevent overdose and respond effectively in an emergency.

Through compassionate, community-focused outreach, OPC is helping break down language barriers so more people across the Central Valley can access overdose prevention education, resources, and support. By transforming awareness into action, OPC is helping build safer, healthier, and more resilient communities.

To learn more about the CHSU Overdose Prevention Committee and its community outreach efforts, contact SOMA-OPC at soma-opc@chsu.edu, follow @CHSU_OPC on Instagram, or explore additional OPC articles.