SafeSpot Overdose Prevention Hotline provides free, 24/7 virtual spotting services to people who use drugs alone. Born out of the grassroots Never Use Alone Massachusetts line, SafeSpot has evolved into a nationally recognized program housed at Boston Medical Center. In this episode, host Dr. Ruchi Shah speaks with Kimber King and TJ Thompson about SafeSpot’s journey from a volunteer-run initiative to a fully funded overdose prevention organization. Together, they discuss the importance of lived experience, lessons learned from rapid growth, and how SafeSpot is saving lives while challenging stigma, health disparities, and overdose risk in both urban and rural communities.

Learning Objectives

• Identify the risks of using substances alone and how virtual spotting addresses these risks.
• Analyze how stigma, isolation, and health disparities contribute to overdose deaths.
• Apply strategies for integrating hotline models like SafeSpot into clinical and community settings, including rural areas.
• Demonstrate how to do a warm handoff to SafeSpot in a traditional healthcare setting

Host & Guest Bios

• Ruchi Shah, DO (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center & Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is the medical director of the Wakefield Hospital Addiction Medicine Consult Service and also provides primary care, addiction medicine, and reproductive healthcare outpatient. Ruchi strives to turn her big feelings into meaningful change and is grateful for the privilege of partnering with and learning from PWUD in their care.
• Kimber King (she/her) is the Operations Coordinator for the SafeSpot Overdose Hotline, an innovative virtual “spotting” service based at Boston Medical Center. A drug war and overdose survivor, she brings both lived experience and leadership to her work supporting people who use drugs and expanding access to overdose prevention services. Kimber’s story was featured on This American Life (“The Call”), and today she channels her journey into building workforce capacity, training operators, and advocating for practical overdose prevention strategies that save lives. She is also pursuing a Community Health Worker Certificate at the Community College of Vermont, further grounding her commitment to community health and meaningful change.
• Tj Thompson (they/them) is the Safety Coordinator at SafeSpot Overdose Helpline based out of Boston Medical Center. They have been advocating for the implementation and legalization of Overdose Prevention Centers in Massachusetts since 2019. They served on The City of Somerville SCS (Supervised Consumption Site) Taskforce from 2020-2022. Tj is currently serving on the Advisory Council for Substance Use for the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. Tj recently returned from Melbourne, Australia where they served as a consultant for the State of Victoria while they began to set up an overdose prevention hotline heavily influenced by the SafeSpot model.

Timestamps:

• 00:00:01 — Intro: Welcome and overview of the podcast series.
• 00:05:49 — Guest intro: Kimber King joins, sharing lived experience.

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Funding for this initiative was made possible by cooperative agreement no. 1H79TI086770 from SAMHSA. The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
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