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Our Realizations and Truths About Harm Reduction
Looking around the room in our focus group, we all realized two really interesting things about who we are and where we’ve been. Number one, that none of us were kids anymore, which is a nice way of saying that most of us already crossed the threshold of mid-life and were heading somewhere on the...
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Harm Reduction: Theory and Practice
If we want to reduce the harm that derives from psychoactive substances, we need to begin by ending two ineffective, enduring and hugely expensive policies and practices in this country. Then we can get to true harm reduction. The first are strategies that seek to control access to and...
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NYS OMH ACT Teams Utilize Harm Reduction Techniques
Harm Reduction can be a useful tool to help address potentially risky, dangerous, or self-destructive behaviors, including drug addiction, unsafe sexual activities, self-harm, and binge eating. The goal of harm reduction is to make dangerous behaviors safer, and to reduce the level of harmful...
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Supervised Injection Facilities: A Logical Progression in Harm Reduction or a Bridge Too Far?
The scourge of opiate abuse continues to rage unabated. It claimed 42,000 lives in 2016, more than in any previous year (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2018). That’s 115 human lives per day. Five of our brothers and sisters are lost each hour. One of our parents, spouses, sons or...
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Embracing Harm Reduction
Many of the people we serve in supportive housing use drugs and alcohol; some in ways that disrupt their lives. That is a fact. Behavior change is hard. That is a truism, and a fact. It is our job as supportive housing providers to serve people who may have struggled for most of their lives with...
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The Use of Harm Reduction in Housing Improves Critical Outcome Indicators in the SMI/CD Population
With the current changes in Medicaid reform about to take place, it has become more important than ever to produce measurable results in resource administration. The management of limited high cost Medicaid and or Medicaid support services is imperative as well. With the proposal from the New York...
