Bilingual Spanish-English campaign educates on opioid crisis

Zulay Sierra was driving in Lucas County last spring when a billboard caught her eye.

“¡QUIERETE!” the black billboard read — a Spanish phrase translating roughly as “care for yourself.”

Before arriving in Toledo in 2021, Ms. Sierra worked as an intensive care unit nurse in her home country of Venezuela. When Ms. Sierra discovered that the billboard was part of a bilingual opioid education campaign, she reached out to the organizers, eager to use her medical expertise to help Spanish-speakers in Toledo.

“I wanted to support my Latino community,” Ms. Sierra said in Spanish. “This campaign is not only for Hispanics, but also for the American community, to become aware of the damage that the excessive consumption of these narcotics is causing in the new generations — to the point of death.”

Nuestra Gente Community Projects announced recently the renewed bilingual public awareness campaign. ¡Quierete! includes newspaper ads, billboards, social media ads, and Nuestra Gente’s 24-hour Spanish-language radio station, WVZC-LP 96.5 FM. For the campaign, Nuestra Gente purchased billboards on Toledo’s East Side and Old South End, neighborhoods the organization knew see high numbers of Spanish-speaking drivers.

¡Quierete! aims to increase knowledge about the opioid crisis amongst Lucas and Wood counties’ Spanish-speaking residents and connect those struggling with opioid use with medical resources.

“Our mission is to provide information and educate the community in their own language about opioids,” said Linda Parra, founder of Nuestra Gente.

Billboard advertisements direct readers to the campaign’s website, quierete.org , which lists local resources and information on drug usage in Lucas County, both in Spanish and English. The website also has a survey, which collects more information on opioid usage and knowledge about opioids among Toledo’s Spanish-speaking residents.

Toledo has felt the painful effects of the nationwide opioid crisis. According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, Toledo has averaged more than 200 drug overdose deaths every year since 2020. Ohio has the seventh highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Joe Wood, a naloxone health educator at the Toledo Lucas County Health Department, said Toledo is currently in the fifth year of a “horrible fentanyl wave.”

“Fentanyl is invisible,” said Mr. Wood. “It has no taste, no smell, and no color. And it’s being placed in almost every drug on the street.”

Mr. Wood said the health department first observed synthetic fentanyl being mixed into heroine; now, fentanyl is increasingly mixed into cocaine and pressed into fake prescription pills. The rise in fentanyl-laced cocaine and pills has shifted the demographics of those dying of overdoses, Mr. Wood said: Instead of people using opioids directly, more and more people dying of overdoses are using other drugs, unknowingly exposing themselves to fentanyl.

In 2021, Hispanic and Latino people represented 5 percent of fatal overdoses in Lucas County — a total of 13 individual deaths. In 2022, that number rose to 19 individuals, accounting for 9 percent of deaths in the county, according to the county health department.

The percentage of people who die of overdoses who are Hispanic has stayed roughly around the percentage of Lucas County’s overall population that identifies as Hispanic — around 7 percent to 8 percent.

Mr. Wood said that lack of Spanish-language outreach in the county remains a problem.

“With a lack of bilingual prevention out there, we recognize that there's a high risk in Spanish-speaking communities of not knowing the harm reduction that we're trying to teach,” said Mr. Wood.

Ms. Parra worries that a lack of Spanish-language resources and education around the opioid crisis is putting her community at risk. She says she encounters young people who are unaware about the opioid epidemic and don’t know what an opioid is.

Ms. Parra has provided transportation and translation services to Spanish-speaking people in the Toledo area for over a decade. Health care services form an important part of Ms. Parra’s work: she helps to schedule appointments, provide transportation to appointments, and translate between providers and patients. Ms. Parra says that while translation services are often offered via phone or tablet, many people feel more comfortable having a person next to them they can communicate with directly.

“We see that there is still a huge need in the community for translation and interpretation services, both culturally and linguistically,” Ms. Parra said.

The campaign is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Ohio Commission on Minority Health, and the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

“I am extremely happy that the organization Nuestra Gente is helping carry out prevention so that everyday people become aware of the damage caused by the consumption of these narcotics,” Ms. Sierra said.

Lucas County residents can also receive free naloxone kits by mail by going to lucascountyhealth.com .