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Speaker 1: A couple months ago, the city of Somerville set up

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Speaker 1: these two public health vending machines.

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Speaker 2: So they're about the size of the vending machine, but

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Speaker 2: you can't see inside, and they have free health supply products.

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Speaker 1: Tina los is with the city's Health and Human Services Department.

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Speaker 1: Instead of candy and snacks, you can find boxes of narcan, tampons, gloves, socks, condoms,

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Speaker 1: things people need to survive but can't always get at

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Speaker 1: any hour of the day or night.

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Speaker 2: A lot of these products are harm reduction, right, so

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Speaker 2: we're trying to get ahead of people being in crisis.

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Speaker 1: The money for this comes from a state opioid settlement,

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Speaker 1: which is aimed at reducing the harm that drugs have

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Speaker 1: caused in society. The city had an outbreak of five

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Speaker 1: overdoses just this weekend. Tina says the machines have given

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Speaker 1: out more than a thousand items so far.

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Speaker 2: To date. We've had one and twenty six dispenses. That's

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Speaker 2: been over the last ten weeks that these have been installed,

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Speaker 2: so that's about one hundred products a week.

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Speaker 1: Kyle Shaffle WBZ, Boston's news radio