Kasandra Botti wears many hats at Mount Nittany Health in Centre County.

And now she’s earned another as the county’s Centralized Coordinating Entity (CCE) which means she’s responsible for distributing Narcan kits throughout the Centre Region.

“This will certainly allow us to provide more kits and get them out there in the community, specifically in the rural areas,” Botti said.

In October Gov. Tom Wolf announced a state-wide effort to combat the opioid crisis.

“I believe they described it as a gripping crisis of opioid overdoses, affecting many people that you and I both know,” Botti said.

With $5 million in funding, more than 63,000 Narcan kits will be handed out over two years throughout the state.

Next week Centre County will receive its first batch with 144 kits.

“We want to put those doses out in the rural parts of the county so that we can make sure that we get the much needed reversal agent to them as quickly as possible,” Botti said.

Six police departments and emergency responders in Centre County had access to Narcan kits before through Mount Nittany Health over the last 18 months.

But receiving them from the state cuts out the hospital as a middle man, allowing departments to keep their stock in house.

“We can actually give them to them ahead of time so they can actually stockpiled so they can replace their own doses,” Botti said.

Within those 18 months Botti said police have used Narcan 23 times — with  20 successful reversals.

And it’s encouraging that the state is helping local municipalities with extra resources.

“I think that’s really the goal through Centre County government, is to attack this as a aggressively as we can and make everybody armed and prepared to deal with the overdose situation,” Botti said.