Harm reduction is a public health approach that aims to reduce harms related to substance use. Harm reduction includes many options and approaches. It may include abstinence, or not using substances at all. Stopping all substance use isn’t required before receiving care. It meets people wherever they are in their substance use journey.
What is harm reduction?
Harm reduction approaches help reduce certain health and safety issues associated with drug use. 1 As a model of substance use care distinct from treatment or recovery support, 2 harm reduction was created by and for people who use drugs 3 to improve health and wellbeing, including during active drug use.
What is the federal government doing to promote harm reduction?
This page highlights current federal activities that promote harm reduction by increasing the availability and access to high-quality harm reduction services, decreasing negative effects of substance use, and reducing stigma related to substance use and overdose. Advance research and demonstrations on innovative harm reduction approaches.
How effective is harm reduction in reducing risk of mortality?
There is persuasive evidence from the adult literature that harm reduction approaches greatly reduce morbidity and mortality associated with risky health behaviours.
What is the American rescue plan’s harm reduction program?
This funding, authorized by the American Rescue Plan, will help increase access to a range of community harm reduction services and support harm reduction service providers as they work to help prevent overdose deaths and reduce health risks often associated with drug use.
What is the role of harm reduction?
Harm reduction plays a significant role in preventing drug-related deaths and offering access to healthcare, social services, and treatment. These services decrease overdose fatalities, acute life-threatening infections related to unsterile drug injection, and chronic diseases such as HIV/HCV.
What is harm reduction CDC?
Harm reduction is any behavior or strategy that helps reduce risk or harm to yourself or others. For example, to reduce the risk of contracting or transmitting HIV, you can practice safer sex or safer drug use.
What are the 6 principles of harm reduction?
We defined six principles of harm reduction and generalized them for use in healthcare settings with patients beyond those who use illicit substances. The principles include humanism, pragmatism, individualism, autonomy, incrementalism, and accountability without termination.
What are values of harm reduction?
Harm reduction is founded on kindness, compassion, and caring, and is underpinned by several key principles. These principles are consistent with the concept of social justice, as well as healthcare professionals' foundational responsibilities, values, code of ethics, code of conduct, and standards of practice.
What are the 4 pillars of harm reduction?
A comprehensive, collaborative, compassionate and evidence-based approach to drug policy.Prevention. Preventing problematic drug and substance use.Treatment. Supporting innovative approaches to treatment and rehabilitation.Harm reduction. ... Enforcement. ... Supported by a strong evidence base.
What is an example of a harm reduction activity?
Harm reduction also comprises addiction facilities, support groups, and medical services, including wound care, vaccinations, and COVID-19 masks. Sex education, STI testing and treatment, condoms, and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) are other critical harm reduction tools and services.
What are the three pillars of harm reduction?
This approach reduces the harms of use through coordinated, multi-agency responses that address the three pillars of harm minimisation. These pillars are demand reduction, supply reduction and harm reduction.
How does harm reduction reduce stigma?
One way to reduce stigma is to change the way we speak about people who use substances and substance use itself. Focus on the positive. Recognize and applaud people who are making positive changes despite their challenges. Use people-first language.
Why is harm reduction important in social work?
Human Rights: Harm reduction respects the basic human dignity and rights of people who use drugs, their families, and communities by adopting a humanistic perspective. It accepts an individual's decision to use drugs and no judgment is made to condone or condemn the use of drugs.
Where did harm reduction originate?
While the vast majority of harm reduction initiatives are educational campaigns or facilities that aim to reduce substance-related harm, a unique social enterprise was launched in Denmark in September 2013 to reduce the financial burden of illicit substance use for people with a drug dependence.
What are the three pillars of harm reduction?
This approach reduces the harms of use through coordinated, multi-agency responses that address the three pillars of harm minimisation. These pillars are demand reduction, supply reduction and harm reduction.
What is harm reduction package?
The comprehensive harm reduction package A comprehensive package of evidence-based interventions to reduce harms associated with injecting drug use is outlined in the WHO, UNAIDS, UNODC technical guide for countries to set targets for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care for injecting drug users.
How does harm reduction reduce stigma?
One way to reduce stigma is to change the way we speak about people who use substances and substance use itself. Focus on the positive. Recognize and applaud people who are making positive changes despite their challenges. Use people-first language.
What is comprehensive harm reduction?
Comprehensive Harm Reduction (CHR) is a set of public health strategies intended to reduce the negative impact of drug use including HIV, hepatitis C, other infections, overdose and death among people who are unable or not ready to stop using drugs.
Why is harm reduction important?
Harm reduction is rooted in a commitment to addressing discrimination and ensuring that nobody is excluded from the health and social services they may need because of their drug use, their race, their gender, their gender identity, their sexual orientation, their choice of work, or their economic status. People should be able to access services without having to overcome unnecessary barriers, including burdensome, discriminatory regulations. Further, the meaningful involvement of people who use drugs in designing, implementing and evaluating programmes and policies that serve them is central to harm reduction.
What is harm reduction?
Harm reduction refers to policies, programmes and practices that aim to minimise negative health, social and legal impacts associated with drug use, drug policies and drug laws. Harm reduction is grounded in justice and human rights. It focuses on positive change and on working with people without judgement, coercion, discrimination, ...
How does harm reduction work?
Harm reduction is fundamentally grounded in principles that aim to protect human rights and improve public health. Treating people who use drugs—along with their families and communities— with compassion and dignity is integral to harm reduction. The use of drugs does not mean people forfeit their human rights - they remain entitled to the right to life, to the highest attainable standard of health, to social services, to privacy, to freedom from arbitrary detention and to freedom from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, among others.
Why is abstinence important?
Access to high quality, evidence-based prevention, care and treatment programs, including approaches that involve cessation of drug use, are important for some people. Entry into treatment should be on the terms of the individual and must never be forced. Many people who use drugs do not need treatment, and those experiencing problems associated with drug use may be unwilling or unable to enter abstinence-only treatment for myriad reasons. While abstinence from drug use may be the goal for some people who use drugs this is an individual choice and should not be imposed, or regarded as the only option.
How is harm reduction effective?
Harm reduction policies and practices are informed by a strong body of evidence that shows interventions to be practical, feasible, effective, safe and cost-effective in diverse social, cultural and economic settings. Most harm reduction interventions are easy to implement and inexpensive, and all have a strong positive impact on individual ...
Do people have rights if they use drugs?
The use of drugs does not mean people forfeit their human rights - they remain entitled to the right to life, to the highest attainable standard of health, to social services, to privacy, to freedom from arbitrary detention and to freedom from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, among others.
What is the goal of the present statement?
The goal of the present statement is to provide HCPs with a background and definition of harm reduction as a public health policy, and to describe how HCPs can effectively use harm reduction with their adolescent patients. BACKGROUND.
How can harm reduction be applied to adolescents?
However, a harm reduction approach is congruent with what we know about adolescent development and decision-making. Adolescence is a time of experimentation and risk-taking. Adolescents also tend to reject authority and strive for autonomy in their decision-making. Young people engage in behaviours that have potentially negative outcomes.
What is motivational interviewing?
Strategies that incorporate motivational interviewing (19) and acknowledge the adolescent’s individual goals are being developed for use with adolescents. Motivational interviewing includes guidelines for addressing resistance, and addressing ambivalence or resistance to change (Table 1).
What is an AMPS program?
The AMPS program is a curriculum aimed at grade 5 and grade 6 students, and includes information about the harms of alcohol abuse and how to deal with social pressures to misuse alcohol. In a randomized, controlled study (19), participants in the AMPS program had significantly fewer alcohol problems than controls.
What is primary prevention of risky behaviour?
Primary prevention of risky behaviour is a reasonable focus for the young adolescent or preteen. This may be achieved by discouraging the behaviour (using sexual behaviour as an example – by encouraging the delay of initiation of sexual activity).
What age group is the highest risk for STIs in Canada?
In fact, the highest rates of STIs in Canada are in the 15- to 24- year age group, with girls 15 to 19 years of age having the highest rates for chlamydia and gonorrhea (11).
What is harm reduction?
Harm reduction is a public health strategy that was developed initially for adults with substance abuse problems for whom abstinence was not feasible. Harm reduction approaches have been effective in reducing morbidity and mortality in these adult populations. In recent years, harm reduction has been successfully applied to sexual health education ...
How does harm reduction work?
Harm reduction prioritizes improving the lives of people who use drugs in partnership with those served without a narrow focus on abstinence from drugs. Evidence has shown that harm reduction oriented practice can reduce transmission of blood-borne illnesses, and other injection related infections, as well as preventing fatal overdose.
What is harm reduction?
Harm reduction is a pragmatic public health approach encompassing all goals of public health: improving health, social well-being, and quality of life. Harm reduction prioritizes improving the lives of people who use drugs in partnership with those served without a narrow focus on abstinence from drugs. Evidence has shown that harm reduction ...
Harm Reduction's Place in and Among Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery
SAMHSA's Current and Future Support For Harm Reduction
- SAMHSA has awarded 25 grantsfor the first-ever SAMHSA Harm Reduction grant program. This funding, authorized by the American Rescue Plan, will help increase access to a range of community harm reduction services and support harm reduction service providers as they work to help prevent overdose deaths and reduce health risks often associated with drug use. SAMHSA …
National Harm Reduction Technical Assistance (TA) Center
- SAMHSA is also collaborating with CDC on their National Harm Reduction Technical Assistance Center to provide a comprehensive approach to harm reduction through syringe services programs (SSPs) and to improve access to prevention and intervention services to prevent infectious disease consequences of drug use. Going beyond education and technical assistanc…
Additional Resources
How Does Harm Reduction Work?
Key Principles of Harm Reduction
Example Approaches of Harm Reduction
Abstinence vs. Harm Reduction
- Can harm reduction be used as a treatment?
Harm reduction can be effectively and safely used as a treatment for substance use. While it won’t deliver the extreme results an abstinence program can, harm reduction strategies are much easier to stick to and offer encouragement with each small victory. An effective harm reduction plan ca… - Is harm reduction effective in the long term?
Harm reduction strategies have proven to be effective over the long term in helping lower HIV transmission rates in the United States, Canada, Australia, and much of Europe. Programs have also been credited with reducing drug use in Canada, Australia, and a handful of western and no…
Critiques of Harm Reduction