Washington Poison Center has spent the past seven years marking International Overdose Awareness Day with a full educational series on prevention, harm reduction, and treatment, taught by its own clinical staff alongside doctors and public health practitioners from around the country. This year's series just wrapped, and the organization is making the sessions freely available to the public. No medical background is required to watch.

Some of the sessions speak directly to issues Seattle is already dealing with. One panel looks at overdose risk in exactly the moment it's supposed to be dropping: after someone moves off the street and into shelter or supportive housing. A San Francisco study cited in the session found a 19-fold increase in fatal overdose risk at that transition point, driven by factors like reduced tolerance and the isolation that can come with finally having a door to close. For people leaving incarceration, the first weeks following release are the single highest-risk window for overdose death, driven by a combination of lost drug tolerance and a fentanyl-contaminated supply. A separate session for correctional staff covers a program designed specifically for that period.

Several sessions examine emerging threats and current treatment debates. One covers medetomidine, an animal sedative increasingly showing up as a fentanyl adulterant, with a review of the intoxication and withdrawal patterns clinicians have been seeing. Another uses scenarios to examine a live debate among harm-reduction clinicians: whether naloxone should be given in smaller, titrated doses rather than one large dose. A third looks at 7-hydroxymitragynine, a kratom-derived compound that behaves much more like a full opioid than kratom itself traditionally has.

The series also covers hospital safety efforts and risks beyond opioids. One session features the Washington State Hospital Association describing a statewide model that's measurably improved opioid-prescribing safety and naloxone availability across hospital systems. Another, led by Washington Poison Center's own chief medical officer, covers wildfire smoke inhalation. With fire season now arriving most summers in the Pacific Northwest, the subject has practical relevance across the region.

The full session list and the Chief Clinical Officer's own summaries of several talks are available through Washington Poison Center's free Zoom sign-up, with recordings also landing on the organization's YouTube channel as they're uploaded. These detailed clinical sessions are a modest, potentially overlooked part of International Overdose Awareness Day, but they remain publicly accessible at no charge as Washington continues to contend with a fentanyl-driven overdose crisis.