There is now greater access to naloxone, a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses, in Boonville and Cooper County.
Six Narcan sites are available to the public throughout the county, and citizens are encouraged to take free boxes of Narcan, the name-brand for naloxone intranasal spray.
This comes after nitazene, a potent synthetic opioid, was discovered in the county’s wastewater earlier this year.
Jesse DeVillier with the Cooper County Public Health Center said the county responded with educational outreach about the risk of synthetic opioids and how naloxone could be used to reverse an opioid overdose.
“That kind of allows that door open for us to say, ‘There’s an issue, let’s try to educate and stay on top of it,’” DeVillier said.
In a county with no hospital and only one urgent care clinic, the Cooper County Public Health Center currently stocks six Narcan grab-and-go locations, which strategically spread across the county.
DeVillier said dispersing naloxone in rural counties has a unique challenge: making sure the medication is actually available in each community, not just centrally located in the largest town.
“Being a small county like this, we're kind of one big family, and with that, family can easily get mad at each other. If you're only taking care of Boonville — it's noticed by Bunceton, it's noticed by Pilot Grove, it's noticed by Prairie Home,” said DeVillier. “So we didn't want to just be able to provide for the dense part of the county. We want to get it in all outskirts of it.”
DeVillier said Narcan has been available at the health department for about two years, and they started opening up satellite distribution sites across the county in late 2024. At the same time, they also created an educational video on opioid use disorder and how to properly administer Narcan.
DeVillier said they had to first find containers that were climate-conscious and could withstand various weather conditions. Then, they reached out to local organizations to see if they would host a distribution site, which can hold 24-30 boxes of Narcan when fully stocked.
“It was one at a time, I remember installing them at our first house. We tried Pilot Grove, and that was our pilot,” said DeVillier. “And then from there, we were able to get Bunston, Prairie Home, and all the way to Blackwater.”
The six locations currently include the Cooper County Public Health Center, the Boonville Fire Department, the Pilot Grove Food Pantry (inside the recycling center), Bunceton High School, Prairie Home City Hall and the Blackwater Post Office.
Five out of the six locations are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, due to their outdoor location.
Lori Vollrath, the city clerk for Pilot Grove, said she recalls when the health department approached them as a potential location last November. She said they decided that a distribution box attached to the Food Pantry would be the best option.
“They decided that would be a nice, discreet place to put it,” said Vollrath. “It’s open 24/7 and it’s covered, so that was the best place to put it.”
Vollrath said they don’t monitor the Narcan supply, and the health department is responsible for maintenance and stocking.
Tari Fitzgerald, the health department’s nursing manager, said they receive their boxes of Narcan at no cost through the University of Missouri-St Louis Addiction Science Team.
She said they restock the distribution sites at the end of every month and check the expiration dates carefully.
“It’s really easy, we just drive to the little towns, they’re very rural, and we just count them and keep a log of how many we’ve dispersed,” Fitzgerald said.
Data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services show a decrease in opioid overdose deaths from 2022 to 2024. In 2022, Missouri reported 1,578 opioid deaths, and in 2024, that number dropped to 910 — a 42.3% decrease.
DeVillier attributed that decline to the increased accessibility of Narcan throughout the state — and Cooper County.
“Just getting that available and having that in the hands of everybody, especially in a day and age where not everybody can get provided some kind of miracle medicine such as Narcan,” said DeVillier. “The fact that we even have that capability, we need to utilize it and do the best we can with it, which I think in Cooper County, we have.
