Tag: Harm reduction | Page 8

Transitioning from incarceration to the community: Reducing risks and improving lives of people who use substances

November 23, 2020 • By Michelle Proctor-Simms, Lindsay Wallace, Cindy MacIsaac, Matthew Bonn, Megan Horochuk and Melody MacLachlan

To help incarcerated people who use substances successfully integrate back into their communities, Direction 180 started the Peers Assisting and Lending Support (PALS) program in January 2019 through harm reduction funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada. Direction 180 is a community-based organization that offers an opioid treatment program in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Satellite Sites: Providing harm reduction from the homes of people who use drugs

October 13, 2020 • By Liam Michaud, Gillian Kolla and Rhiannon Thomas

The term “satellite sites” is used to refer to informal harm reduction hubs operating out of the homes of people who use drugs. Operating in Toronto for more than 20 years, these sites offer access to sterile drug use supplies outside of more formal settings like health centres. Although many satellite sites offer much more than this – including naloxone and overdose response training, needle disposal and referrals to healthcare services. Satellite programs emerged from the recognition that people who use drugs were already doing this work within their communities, operating informally to meet harm reduction needs and respond to a range of other health needs.

Valuing lived experience of substance use in our organizations: Five areas of policy and best practice

September 1, 2020 • By Murray Jose-Boerbridge

Does your organization support the meaningful engagement of individuals with lived experience of substance use? The assumption and our immediate response to this question should be a resounding yes! However, we know that this is often not the case.

How we can help keep people who use drugs alive during COVID-19

August 4, 2020 • By Matthew Bonn

Many creative solutions have been implemented to keep people who use drugs safe, and these solutions need to be scaled up and continued beyond the pandemic, to reach people who don’t live in areas with adequate harm reduction services.

Gendering the Scene: We need to listen to women and gender-diverse people who use drugs

June 22, 2020 • By Sandra Ka Hon Chu and Cécile Kazatchkine

Over the past several years, Canada has been in the grip of an overdose crisis. We have seen the devastating effects both of a contaminated drug supply and of punitive laws that restrict access of people who use drugs to effective treatment and support. Now we are facing the twin crisis of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which has radically altered the way we interact with one another and affected the drug supply chain.

Now more than ever, we need a safe supply of drugs

April 21, 2020 • By Matthew Bonn

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has everyone extremely worried, and understandably so. But there is another public health emergency that still hasn’t been resolved – the overdose crisis. And COVID-19 is threatening to create two epidemics among people who use drugs, unless we take immediate action.