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The Chicago Department of Public Health, in partnership with the 46th Ward, is launching an initiative to distribute naloxone — an emergency opioid overdose medication commercially known as Narcan — through repurposed newspaper boxes.
The health department and city leaders unveiled the venture at a harm reduction fair outside the Department of Family & Support Services’ Uptown location at 845 W. Wilson Ave. late Wednesday afternoon.
Announced days ahead of International Overdose Awareness Day on Sunday, the initiative consists of four Narcan newspaper boxes to start, installed at various locations across Uptown.
The idea is to make combating opioid overdose more accessible, more of the time.
“We want to ensure that everyone here in Uptown and around Chicago has access to life-saving medications,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said at Wednesday’s unveiling. He was joined by Ald. Angela Clay, 46th, CDPH Commissioner Olusimbo Ige, DFSS Commissioner Angela Green and local health providers.
The project has been in the works for nearly a year, according to Eleana Molise, director of housing and community services for the 46th Ward. It grew out of a conversation between the ward office and the health department, where the question of how accessible Narcan is in the community and how that access could be expanded arose, Molise said.
Already, the health department stocks Narcan in all 81 Chicago Public Library branches. But libraries close, Molise said.
“We wanted to see if there was a creative solution around that,” she said.
Narcan newspaper boxes, which the city is calling newsstands, are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They are located outside Nourishing Hope, 3945 N. Sheridan Road; Cornerstone Community Shelter, 4628 N. Clifton Ave., the Institute of Cultural Affairs, 4750 N. Sheridan Road; and the DFSS’ Uptown location on Wilson Avenue. Newspaper boxes were placed strategically in areas with high foot traffic and close to populations that might need Narcan, Molise said.
For the next year, the 46th Ward office will be tracking how much Narcan is distributed from the newspaper boxes. Afterward, they hope to share that data with the broader community, ultimately with the hope that the initiative can be expanded to other parts of the city, Molise said.
The 46th Ward office, alongside the health department, has been rolling out the news boxes over the past couple of weeks. So far, they’ve distributed nearly 300 boxes of Narcan, Molise said. Wednesday’s event was staged to raise awareness.
“At a time in our country where people are fighting each other … today we’re celebrating a life-saving intervention, where people are saying, ‘I will help. I will be a problem-solver. I will be part of the solution,’” Ige said.
Last year, the number of opioid overdose deaths in Cook County dropped dramatically from 2023, a decline county officials said at the time was a testament to measures Cook County Health had been instituting, including efforts to distribute naloxone.
In Chicago, after opioid-related EMS calls rose from 3,000 annually in 2015 to more than 13,000 in 2020, data shows calls have been on the decline in recent years, according to CDPH. Through the first six months of 2025, opioid-related EMS calls are down 24% from the same period last year, per the health department.
With the newly launched newspaper boxes, “we’re adding just another layer to that commitment, one that says in a very real way, every life is worth saving and fighting,” Green said Wednesday to a crowd of about 75 people.
Ald. Clay called the unveiling a “historic moment for our community.”
After watching the announcement from the crowd, West Side native Kimberly McIntosh, 57, said she used to struggle with addiction, noting that she’d nearly overdosed eight times.
McIntosh attended Wednesday’s fair and unveiling to network and gather news that she could pass on to someone who might be struggling, like she once did.
Seeing the resources being made available “brought joy to my heart,” she said. But it also served as a reminder that there’s still work to do. “It gave me something to think about,” she said. “It let me know that the disease is still out there.”
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