{"id":143303,"date":"2026-04-06T13:27:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/?post_type=bu-article&p=143303"},"modified":"2026-04-06T13:28:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:28:34","slug":"bu-bmc-researchers-work-with-high-school-students-to-build-peer-led-overdose-prevention-program","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/news-events\/articles\/2026\/bu-bmc-researchers-work-with-high-school-students-to-build-peer-led-overdose-prevention-program\/","title":{"rendered":"BU, BMC Researchers Work with High School Students to Build Peer-Led Overdose Prevention Program"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Students and researchers are exploring ways to get these robust, peerdesigned resources into the hands of Boston students and teenagers. O\u2019Bryant students Jayden Fernandez (from left), Julia Silva, Agnes Arua, Amidat Ayinde, Carlie Augustin, Success Omoregie, Samantha Lee, and Ella Gelling Zurek.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBU, BMC Researchers Work with High School Students to Build Peer-Led Overdose Prevention Program\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Creating a curriculum for teens, by teens: students from a Roxbury school met with researchers
all summer to learn about opioid overdose prevention<\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n
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All summer of 2025, in a classroom normally occupied by aspiring doctors and healthcare professionals at the medical school, Boston high school students met to build something important. The students, most of them rising seniors at the John D. O\u2019Bryant School of Math & Science in Boston\u2019s Roxbury neighborhood, gathered once a week to cocreate (alongside BU medical professionals) a curriculum meant to teach their peers about drug overdoses: what they are, how to prevent them, how to recognize someone in distress, and what to do about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program they devised\u2014largely built by teenagers, for teenagers\u2014 could help fill a critical educational gap, says Sarah Bagley, an associate professor of medicine and pediatrics in the school\u2019s Clinical Addiction Research & Education (CARE) Unit. For adults, Bagley says, treating and preventing opioid overdoses generally means treating drug addiction, too. But this isn\u2019t usually the case when it comes to young people and teenagers, who more often overdose accidentally and aren\u2019t necessarily addicted to opioids. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe think that some of the risk factors for youth are a little bit different,\u201d says Bagley, who is also a primary care physician at Boston Medical Center (BMC), Boston\u2019s safety-net hospital. \u201cNot as many of them may have opioid use disorder, and therefore may not need treatment to prevent overdose.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For adults, she says, preventing overdose likely means using methadone and suboxone\u2014medical interventions that help reduce a patient\u2019s withdrawal symptoms and cravings for opioids. But this sort of protracted medical care may not be necessary to treat a young person experiencing an opioid overdose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of teenagers are using drugs maybe for the first time or intermittently, and are accidentally or unknowingly exposed to fentanyl. This potent opioid can then lead to an overdose,\u201d she says. \u201cThe opportunity to prevent that introduction from happening isn\u2019t necessarily engaging them in treatment\u2014it\u2019s making sure they understand that the drug supply has a lot of fentanyl in it. It\u2019s a different approach.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question then becomes how to build an educational model that will reach busy teenagers and also be understandable and approachable. It\u2019s a question Bagley and her colleagues at BMC and the schools of medicine and public health put to the experts: teenagers themselves. They launched an equity-centered, peer-led overdose prevention program at the O\u2019Bryant School, cocreated directly with students, to address this critical public health challenge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur group has been thinking a lot about how to provide more community-based education, so that youth can learn about those risks for themselves, but also so they can talk to their friends and family and other people in their community about overdose,\u201d Bagley says. More than 40 high school students applied to join the program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers narrowed it down to about half that, 17 students. Throughout the summer, a team of BU and BMC addiction and harm-reduction researchers met with the O\u2019Bryant students to teach them about public health, social determinants of opioid abuse, overdose risk, and more. The students then broke into groups to design an overdose prevention curriculum. One group built a website filled with useful information about the risk factors for overdose; another produced short, catchy videos about how to compassionately confront a friend who may be using drugs; and another designed a presentation on recognizing signs of an overdose and what to do about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The students and researchers continue to explore ways to get these robust, peer-designed resources into the hands of Boston students. \u201cThe final products that these students created are amazing,\u201d Bagley says. \u201cThey\u2019re educational while still being accessible. They\u2019re just wonderful resources.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All summer of 2025, in a classroom normally occupied by aspiring doctors and healthcare professionals at the medical school, Boston high school students met to build something important. The students, most of them rising seniors at the John D. O\u2019Bryant School of Math & Science in Boston\u2019s Roxbury neighborhood, gathered once a week to cocreate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19603,"featured_media":143304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[],"bu-publication":[367],"medicine-article-category":[],"medicine-topic":[],"news-article-category":[],"news-topic":[],"bu_edition":[538],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/143303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143303"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/143303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143306,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/143303\/revisions\/143306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143303"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=143303"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-article-category?post=143303"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-topic?post=143303"},{"taxonomy":"news-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-article-category?post=143303"},{"taxonomy":"news-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-topic?post=143303"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=143303"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=143303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}