This series of five audio documentaries called “The Fix” explores the pervasive nature of the opioid epidemic in New York. The reporting, focused in the Bronx, Staten Island and Long Island, investigated what caused the crisis, what’s being done about it, and how denial and stigma are fueling a record number of overdose deaths. The audio documentaries comprise a sound-rich and immersive podcast.
Chapter One, “The History You Never Heard,” takes listeners to the South Bronx, New York City’s poorest neighborhood, which has been dealing with a deadly heroin epidemic for generations.
Chapter Two, “Not My Kid,” maps out how rampant prescriptions for painkillers laid the foundation for a deadly heroin epidemic in Staten Island.
Chapter Three, “Detox, Rehab, Relapse, Repeat” explores Staten Island’s new strategies to deal with the epidemic, while residents are largely in denial.
Chapter Four, “A Better Way to Treat Addiction” takes listeners back to the South Bronx, where healthcare providers are pioneering a treatment approach that is way ahead of the rest of the country.
Chapter Five, “We Need to Talk” goes to Long Island, where healthcare providers are being trained in basic conversations to identify substance use and addiction.
The series culminated in a public event, detailed further down. The series stands out for its diversity of voices, including sensitive perspectives from patients and providers, and the depth of access to facilities and personal stories. The reporting revealed that the South Bronx is significantly ahead of other places with its treatment programs for opioid addiction.
This series provided some of the earliest reporting on how nonprofit workers in the Bronx were illegally using testing strips to find out whether a drug user’s heroin contained the far stronger and deadlier opioid, fentanyl. The workers — who were finding fentanyl in nearly all samples they tested — likened this to when needle exchange programs were illegal, noting that they broke the law then too, to distribute clean needles in order to save lives. The series also included early reporting on preliminary results of New York City’s own citywide survey on fentanyl in the drug supply, with the researcher saying that the presence of fentanyl is “becoming ubiquitous.” The reporters who worked on “The Fix” were recent graduates of CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism. The GroundTruth podcast is a co-production with WGBH News, and can be heard on the project website or on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud and other podcasting apps.