Denver Health introduces naloxone vending machine

A fatal overdose occurs in Colorado nearly every five hours. In 2023, 1,865 people died from a drug overdose in Colorado and more than 17,000 lives have been lost to overdoses in Colorado since 2000.

To help reduce lives lost to overdose in the Denver community, Denver Health’s Outpatient Behavioral Health Services helped launch the first naloxone vending machine on Denver Health’s hospital campus.

The vending machine is designed to increase no-cost access to the life-saving opioid reversal drug naloxone in the Denver community through the National Institute of Drug Abuse’s VEnding machine Naloxone Distribution in Your community (VENDY) program. 

“This is so much more than just a vending machine—more than a soda, more than a snack,” Sarah Christensen, MD, medical director of outpatient substance use disorder treatment at Denver Health, said. “This is life-saving medication and life-affirming self-care available completely for free. You simply show up, push a few buttons and be ready to save a life.” 

The vending machine distributes packages containing two doses of naloxone which are available at no cost with the code displayed on the machine. Personal hygiene kits are also available at no cost in the machine.

“Harm reduction resources like naloxone play an important role in the work we do to treat people with substance use disorders,” Christian Thurstone, MD, chair of behavioral health at Denver Health, said. “Having this machine on Denver Health’s campus reflects our commitment to supporting our patients with the resources they need in all aspects of life.”

Denver Health’s naloxone vending machine is a part of a larger initiative to increase access to naloxone throughout Denver in partnership with the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

“This project really started when I was looking at data and saw that we had this life-saving medicine that prevented opioid overdose deaths, but we were struggling to get the medicine to people who were using substances,” Nicole Wagner, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said. “People in the community let us know that a vending machine is a way that they felt they could get the privacy they were looking for when picking up naloxone, and now we have machines throughout the state of Colorado.”

The vending machine is accessible 24/7 and is located outside of Denver Health’s Outpatient Behavioral Health Services building (Pavilion K) on its hospital campus.