A naloxone kit contains the emergency treatment medication used to counteract the effects of a known or suspected opioid overdose. While several Bay Area school districts have begun to make such kits available for emergency use on campus, adoption is voluntary and there is no statewide policy requiring their use. (Photo courtesy of New Brunswick/Nouveau-Brunswick via Bay City News)

Santa Clara County will begin providing the opioid overdose-reversing medicine naloxone in all county library branches in an effort to make the treatment more widely available.

The county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to make naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, available at all county libraries and to train library staff on how to administer Narcan to someone who has overdosed on an opioid like fentanyl.

Santa Clara County Librarian Jennifer Weeks said the county is also exploring partnerships with cities like San Jose and Mountain View that have their own library systems.

Narcan has been approved as a prescription drug since 2015 and is the standard treatment to reverse an opioid overdose by reversing or blocking an opioid’s effects on the brain.

“By increasing access to these kits, we can help prevent opioid-related deaths and ensure that our community has the resources it needs to stay safe a healthy,” said Supervisor Otto Lee, who called for making Narcan available at local libraries.

Other library systems across the country have made Narcan kits freely available to members of the public, including the San Francisco Public Library and the library systems in Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Denver.

The Santa Clara County Library’s website can be found at https://sccld.org.