An overview of some elements of the overdose crisis, Brave's vision for an appropriate response, and a challenge statement.

1. Realtime Overdose Alerts
for volunteer responders
1
www.brave.coop
Gordon Casey
604 500 8569
gordon@brave.coop
Good evening and thank you so much for all showing up here tonight.
My name is Gordon and I’m here with the Brave Coop – we’re building a platform for realtime overdose alerts to community responders.

2. THE OPIOID CRISIS
“It’s not a crisis, it’s a fucking war out there.”
-Vancouver Downtown Eastside Resident, May 2017
“This is a poisoning epidemic, these are political killings.”
-Vikki Reynolds, PhD, trauma counsellor, Nov. 2017
You have no doubt heard that there is an opioid crisis across north America. Let’s look behind the headlines and within the numbers just a little bit, to provide some
context for the approach that Brave is taking on this issue.

3. SRO
5%Street
11%
Private Residences
84%
Where are people dying?
(Zero
fatalities
occur at Safe
Injection
Sites)
If you overdose in the DTES of Vancouver, you have a 3.5% chance of dying. Whereas if you overdose outside of the downtown core, you have about a 33% chance of
dying. And if you overdose in a safe injection site (Insite, Overdose Prevention Society), you have a 0% chance of dying.

4. Not Called
61%
911 Called
39%
Percentage of known overdoses that called 911
There are many reasons why people don’t call 911. The first is that if there is nobody to see you overdose, there is nobody to call 911. [But beyond that, most overdoses
are reversed by a community member. A fellow drug user, a supervised injection site worker or volunteer, or any other community member that finds you.]
People who use drugs do not trust authority – they trust each other. And most of the time they’d rather take their chances on the street than with the powers that be –
whether that’s a cop, a paramedic, the fire department or a hospital.

5. OUR EXPERTS
Over 400 hours of interviews with more than 200 people and
42 organisations directly affected by the crisis
How have we approached this issue at Brave? Well, we’ve engaged with the experts. Technology experts are easy to find (relatively), but gathering insight from the
people we aim to serve is a case of getting out of the building, wearing down that shoe leather, listening and learning a lot of humility.

6. In the Human Centered Design process, we spent a full year here in the Inspiration phase, immersing ourselves in this problem and learning to really, really love it. You’ll
read a lot of advice that you need to “fall in love with your problem and not your solution” but unfortunately that’s one of those things that you don’t understand until
you’ve experienced it. [And once you have access to that experience, it’s so much easier to do it with other problems and solutions (including other peoples). Which is
why an experienced mentor can be such a valuable asset.]
We’re now right here in the Converge phase of the Ideation process – designing our pilot launch which will lead to insights and iterations and some more testing before
we get to Implementation.

7. Our Theory of Change for this issue shifted quite fundamentally [– even if the outward appearance of the solution may not appear too dramatic.]

8. +
Our core hypothesis was that combining the power of community with the speed and ubiquity of technology would be sufficient to drive change.

9. Our shift came as we realized that what needs to happen is a complete shift in thinking – the same shift I went through personally as I buried myself in this problem.
The way to drive this change is through more than community, it’s through a movement, through a revolution. And our role, at Brave, is to be the technological piece of
that movement.

10. The core problem, as we now understand it, is not addiction, or the fact that people are using alone, or the fact that the drug supply has effectively been contaminated
with poison.
The core problem is stigma. And the dehumanization of addicts and drug users; the blaming of victims.

11. 0
400
800
1200
1600
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
BC OVERDOSE DEATHS BYYEAR
That’s the only thing that explains how we aren’t all jumping up and down in the streets at the death rate in BC. 1,422 people in 2017. Because somehow we’re all kind of
okay with it... not completely okay with it, but we can aim just enough of the blame at the drug user, or society, or the health authority, or the pharmaceutical companies...
anyone but ourselves.

12. That’s the only reason why these people don’t think they’re at risk of overdose. When in fact these are the people Most at risk because they don’t have a community of
support, or safety practices and habits to prevent overdose.

13. And stigma is why these kids are at risk when they try some drug for the first time. If there was no stigma, we would talk openly about the risks, people could still
experiment but would at least take the minimal precautions necessary to prevent overdose.

14. This person who defied every stereotype the world threw at him... even he felt so much shame around this that even his wife didn’t know he was addicted to opiates. He
probably didn’t even admit it to himself. And yet even Prince couldn’t get clean pills.

15. So we went from thinking we’d build an app that alerted a community of volunteer responders in the event of an overdose... to a platform with all sorts of tech and use-
cases triggering an overdose alert and sending it to community volunteers, the ambulance/911 and recording the data and making it openly accessible for data scientists
to analyse and policy makers to use for decision-making.

16. A digital safe consumption site + a bit of revolution
WHAT IS BRAVE
16
Brave is part of a revolution to see drug users as worthy of our love, our medical attention and technology, and our understanding.

17. One member - one vote
Worker and User shares converted to Investor shares regularly
…
PLATFORM CO-OP
17
Whether you’re an app user, a graphic designer, a volunteer worker or a financial investor – everyone gets one vote each (per person, not per share) and...

18. 18
30%
35%
35%
PROFIT DISTRIBUTION
Users/Customers
Workers/Employees
Investors
profits are split between the three groups. (We happen to think that all digital platform should be like this... Google, Facebook, Uber...)

19. we’re a Zebra startup – we’re trying to fix things, not become a billion dollar silicon valley unicorn.

20. 20
The 12 principles of Design Justice guide us in our design work. Not dissimilar to Human Centered Design, but there are some wonderful expressions of what it means to
design inclusively and fairly.

21. STATUS
- that’s a photo of me

22. How might we activate and engage youth to join the
movement to destigmatise drug use and re-humanise
drug users?
CHALLENGE STATEMENT
22
We have so many challenges! But this is one that you are all experts in. Young people are dying and losing their friends and family. And you are also the most awesome
generation of changemakers we have ever seen. If anyone can drive this revolution forward, it’s you!

23. • Apply to join our pilot (www.brave.coop)
• Come work with us!
• Spread the word.
THANKYOU
23
If this feels right, or important, to any of you at all, please join our coop, join our pilot, come and work with us and tell your friends.

24. www.brave.coop

25. Realtime Overdose Alerts
for volunteer responders
www.brave.coop
Gordon Casey
604 500 8569
gordon@brave.coop
brave.coop