Since the 1980s, opioid overdose deaths have climbed significantly in Canada. By 2016, Canada was experiencing eight opioid-related deaths every day. The numbers have almost quadrupled in the past decade.

According to Health Canada, as of 2023, daily opioid overdoses result in:

• 22 deaths
• 17 hospitalizations
• 80 emergency visits
• 121 EMS responses

Health Canada recommends using Naloxone, a fast-acting drug that temporarily reverses the effects of an opioid overdose, to give people more time to access emergency services and potentially save a life.

With its Opioid Poisoning Response Program for Underserved Communities, St. John Ambulance set out to increase awareness of the opioid crisis, reduce stigma around drug use, and train community members to recognize and treat overdoses with Naloxone. 

To assess and improve the program, St. John Ambulance used ThoughtExchange to gather qualitative participant data pre- and post-training. With the three-year program now closed, Tofunmi Laleye, Program Evaluation Manager, shared ThoughtExchange’s impact on St. John Ambulance’s engagement, analysis, and reporting—and the program’s successful outcomes.

St. John Ambulance’s Opioid Poisoning Response Program for Underserved Communities aimed to make a tangible impact on communities across Canada. The program consisted of free online training, adding an opioid poisoning module to all first aid certification courses, in-person training, and distribution of nasal Naloxone kits for underserved communities and frontline workers.

St. John Ambulance brought ThoughtExchange on to capture its participants’ perspectives in a streamlined and effective way. Surveying participants before and after the training, program directors captured:

• 17,000 thoughts
• from 18,000+ participants
• for a total of 289,000 ratings

Laleye explains that ThoughtExchange provided qualitative data on the effectiveness of the training for different audiences. They initially used this to adjust the training based on the feedback with the highest alignment. 

“We wanted to be able to represent data from the perspective of different audiences,” Laleye shares, “We wanted to be able to see what each of these audiences was saying before and after the training. We gained a lot of insight from their feedback to modify the training.” 

The data also allowed St. John Ambulance to give context to the numbers behind their training. It provided Laleye with a qualitative narrative to complement the quantitative data she uses when reporting outcomes. "We always want to be able to show the perspective of our participants, not just the percentages. We also want to hear what people have to say."

As one participant shared about the training’s impact:

“Before, I knew nothing about this. Now, I feel confident using Naloxone professionally and in the community if needed.” 4.5 stars

Laleye values ThoughtExchange’s AI-powered analytics. As a data collation and analysis professional, she says ThoughtExchange saved her weeks of work in her qualitative analysis.

The data Summary, written by our proprietary AI based on the engagement data, stood out for Laleye. When asked how long it would typically take her to summarize 17,000 open-ended answers, Laleye laughed. “That much analysis would have to be done over time,” she says, “it would be overwhelming.”

But ThoughtExchange takes care of it instantly. “ThoughtExchange does a lot of the work I'm looking for,” Laleye explains. “The immediate data summary helps me to know what we're looking for in the data, what people are talking about, and the key themes that stand out. The summary saves me a lot of thinking right at the start, especially for the qualitative aspect.”

Laleye also appreciated the high-level Themes our AI instantly identifies and outlines from the engagement data. “The Themes tool is great. We always identify Themes when writing qualitative analyses,” she shares. “Themes help because I want to see the big picture quickly.”

With the Compare feature in our Survey Analysis dashboard, Laleye can cross-analyze survey data effortlessly. "We'll typically do a [cross-tabulation analysis] to see relationships between different groups’ responses. I can easily do that in the Results Dashboard. I don't have to do anything or put in any formulas; the platform does it for me."

St. John Ambulance’s Opioid Poisoning Response Program for Underserved Communities was a success. Laleye is enthusiastic about its impact and honored to have been a part of it. “It's a huge privilege to be part of a program that has directly contributed to saving lives across Canada,” she tells us.

As she works on the final report for Health Canada, Laleye is confident that the ThoughtExchange data will help St. John Ambulance demonstrate the program's considerable impact over three years.

“We used ThoughtExchange to give more context to our quantitative numbers. We want to tell that story beyond the numbers,” she explains. “We're also using the ThoughtExchange data to highlight that while this program is ending, there is still a huge need for it among diverse communities.”

Thoughts like this one capture the impact of St. John Ambulance’s opioid response training on its participants:

“This training is raising awareness of the ongoing national crisis and how to curb it. It will save precious lives.” [4.5 stars]

Laleye is passionate about the program’s impact and hopes it will encourage Health Canada to invest in future training programs and Naloxone distribution at St. John Ambulance. With feedback gathered through ThoughtExchange, she can provide both the numbers and the narrative to support them. “We can show Health Canada what people are saying about the program’s impact on them and demonstrate the ongoing need for Naloxone training,” Laleye explains.

As a Canadian company, we are honored to have contributed to St. John Ambulance’s Opioid Poisoning Response Program for Underserved Communities. Programs like this destigmatize opioid addiction and overdose, provide people with the knowledge and confidence to make a real impact in their communities, and ultimately, save lives.