In this interview, we spotlight a passionate youth advocate who is leading the charge to eliminate stigma. Though some sections have been lightly edited, it is otherwise presented in their own words. Learn more about SAFE Project’s volunteer program, including our Youth VOICE Council.
Can you share a little about yourself and how you got involved with SAFE Project?
My name is Harini Senthil. I’m from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’ve been really interested in finding empathetic, person-centered solutions to the opioid crisis ever since I saw this issue in my community firsthand. The overdose death statistics are really shocking. When I realized that this is such a huge issue — not just on a local level, but on a national level — I realized that I needed to take action in any way that I could as a teenager. What really brought me into this was I started doing a research project for my school about trends in the opioid crisis in Oklahoma, and I started looking at how increases in fentanyl, xylizine, and synthetic opioids were contributing to changes in overdose response and harm reduction from 2018 to 2022.
It was really cool to see the drug overdose trends and the impact of our public health response, whether that be person-centered language or finding new ways to reach out to people who use drugs and their families in a non-stigmatizing manner. Through this process, I interviewed a lot of people who worked in public health nonprofits related to the opioid crisis, and that’s how I met Andrea Atwood (Volunteer Coordinator) from SAFE Project.
From there, I got involved with SAFE Project’s Youth VOICE Council. We meet about twice a month for an hour to talk about different opportunities and workshops to learn more about how we can contribute to solutions for this crisis in our community. I’ve learned about Narcan training. We’ve done the Naloxone Accessibility Challenge, where each of us goes to different pharmacies, or wherever there’s naloxone available, and we fill out a survey about how easy it was to get, how much it cost, or if it was free, and the location of that naloxone. I started contributing to that by looking at all of the free naloxone vending machines in Oklahoma because that was a huge initiative. I thought that this was a good way to put Oklahoma on the map regarding naloxone and figure out what resources are available and what isn’t.
I think it was amazing that SAFE Project is such a large national organization that really focuses on bringing everyone to the table — from the Youth VOICE Council to SAFE Campuses, SAFE Veterans, SAFE Workplaces… It’s really cool that everyone is being included in finding these solutions, and it’s important to see that it’s not just me and my community trying to solve this issue. I’ve gotten to meet so many peers through the Youth VOICE Council from different states who are trying to incorporate different solutions in their schools and their communities. It’s really given me new ideas for ways to approach substance use prevention in my school and how we can improve these policies for more students.
Why do you feel it’s so important for youth to get involved?
So I am part of Gen Z, and I know the world likes to call us screenagers who can’t get off of TikTok… but I think youth are really at the forefront of all of these new trends that are happening with how teens access substances. It doesn’t look the same like the 90s anymore. It’s not that you encounter a substance at a party and you’re peer-pressured to use it. A lot more teens are gaining access to illicit substances and fentanyl through online social media platforms. It’s not just in person. I think including youth in the conversation is crucial to understanding all of these new trends and also figuring out how to enhance substance use prevention education, and to do so in a way that includes teens in the conversation, because it’s hard to make change for us without us.
I was doing more research into the root causes of the opioid epidemic and the effects, I realized that a lot of people have so much medication just sitting around in these medication cabinets. A lot of it tends to be expired. You just tend to hold on — I know that at my house, we used to do this as well. “We might just need it for another day”… and it’s five years expired. And it’s not great for pets who might ingest it — children, people who are forgetful, and teens who might be experimental. Just because something is prescribed doesn’t mean it’s always effective to the same extent. It could be dangerous after its expiration date, or if it’s taken in the wrong amount by the wrong person. There’s so much that we just don’t realize is sitting in our bathroom cabinets just lurking there. It’s also not great if you simply dispose those medications down the drain. My partner on my app is really interested in the environmental impacts of pharmaceutical pollution, and I realized that this was really polluting our water sources through medication waste. There needed to be a sustainable way to get rid of these medications and not have expired medications just hanging out. So I started working on the Congressional App Challenge, which is a program in many different Congressional districts across the country.
What is Crisis Averted?
M partner, Emma, and I developed an app called Crisis Averted, which helps people keep track of medication expiration dates and how much medication you’re supposed to take every day. It sends out daily reminders and it keeps track of where the safe medication disposal boxes that are closest to you are, and if there are any safe medication take-back events that are happening in your area as well. I realized that the DEA was sponsoring a lot of safe medication take-back events with local police departments, pharmacies, and nursing homes, as well for people to just drop off these medications when they’re expired or they have too much of them. This is a great way to get rid of these medications in a safe and sustainable way for the environment. A lot of people just don’t know about these opportunities when and where they’re happening, and this contributes to a lot more confusion. People are just going to pick the easier option, which is just flush these medications down the drain if they aren’t aware of these alternatives.
We use Swift and XCode to code the platform, and we are using a image generating feature where you can take a picture of the medication bottle and it can extract the information about dosages and expiration dates from that.
What’s next for you and the app?
Because we won the Congressional App Challenge for our Congressional district, we are invited to this event called House of Code, which happens in April. It’s an event where all of the winners of apps across the country get to meet each other and showcase their apps at the capital to representatives, senators, and members of the community who are interested in learning more about all these new youth solutions. It’s been really cool to meet other app developers through this, because there are teenagers who have created solutions for detecting forms of skin cancer, keeping track of scheduling, or finding new solutions for figuring out your carbon footprint. That’s really cool to see the wide range of youth innovation that’s out there.
It’s been wonderful working with SAFE Project’s Youth VOICE Council, and as I head off into college, I definitely want to get involved with the Collegiate Recovery Leadership Academy and other opportunities with SAFE Campuses to expand my knowledge on this issue and figure out new solutions on a college level.
What advice do you have for others your same age — from a town, state, or national level?
I think the advice is actually pretty similar on all of those levels. It just really starts with finding a passion that you see as an issue in your community, because it’s really hard to create any project if you’re not really passionate about the issue and the impact it could have on your community. I’ve seen this with my research experiences and with coding an app. It really helps to have a “why” because it’s difficult when you’re in the nitty-gritty to really see the end and see the impact it could have.
I also think it’s important to find new ways to add to the conversation. It’s important to improve authentic youth engagement, not just having us as a figurehead, but really incorporating our perspectives into real policies. I think SAFE Project’s Youth VOICE Council does a really great job of doing that. We’ve gotten to engage with so many different aspects of SAFE Project — I’ve gotten to do the overdose reversal trainings and the No Shame Education Program. It’s been great to see that our voices are really being heard in this conversation.