NEW RIVER VALLEY, Va. – A mobile outreach clinic is meeting people where they are — and the results are hard to ignore. Rise Above reversed nearly 300 overdoses in the New River Valley in 2025, using a street-level strategy built on compassion, lived experience and life-saving supplies.
Appalachia and Southwest Virginia are widely considered ground zero for the opioid crisis in the United States. Since 2000, Virginia has recorded more than 17,000 fatal overdoses, with the vast majority linked to opioids.
What Rise Above offers
Rise Above distributes naloxone — the overdose-reversing medication sold under the brand name Narcan — to anyone who needs it. The program also provides safe sex kits, sexually transmitted infection testing, basic hygiene items, wound care kits and safe use supplies.
“We provide naloxone to everybody,” said Dr. Noelle Bissell, director of the New River Health District. “We want to make sure we get as much naloxone out there as we can.”
Fighting stigma alongside addiction
Beyond the supplies, Rise Above is working to dismantle the shame that often keeps people from seeking help.
“We’re really trying to get rid of the stigma,” Bissell said. “Folks that are struggling with addiction, they feel enough shame and we don’t need to just lay that on. We really need to lift them up. We really need to give them that connection, give them that support, that sense of community.”
The power of lived experience
Many who work with Rise Above have their own history with addiction. Peer Support Specialist Devin Perdue is one of them.
“We come from a lived experience perspective,” Perdue said. “I’m someone that’s in long-term recovery. We do our best to look at it from that perspective and provide compassion — intimate support.”
That personal connection is something Bissell says is irreplaceable.
“People like Devin, people who have been through it, people who have suffered through some of the worst and have made their way out of it — they’re essential,” she said.
For Perdue, showing up is personal.
“Most of the people I see know who I am. They knew where I was years ago,” Perdue said. “I feel like the change I’ve made personally helps others understand that it can be done.”
Fatal overdoses declining, but the fight isn’t over
Bissell says fatal overdoses are declining, in part due to the wider distribution of Narcan. However, overall overdose numbers have not decreased at the same rate.