A collection of recent webinars and training videos on harm reduction, overdose prevention, and response, and related topics.
This webinar answered frequently asked questions related to xylazine and other emerging issues in unregulated drug supply in WA State.
- How often is xylazine detected in the WA State drug supply?
- What does drug checking tell us about other drug supply changes?
- How can harm reduction and other programs communicate to their participants about the drug supply?
- What are best practices for care for xylazine-related wounds?
Speakers:
- WA State Community Drug Checking Network: Caleb Banta-Green, Ben Biamont, and Lex Schreiber
- Public Health-Seattle & King County Street Medicine Team: Carrie Reinhart and Molly Bosch
What do permanent supportive housing residents think about drug use, overdose, where they live, and their service needs?
Residents living in permanent supportive housing are at a higher risk to witness or have an overdose. To learn more about this group of people and substance use issues, ADAI Research Coordinator and UW MSW Student Saul Petersky conducted a survey of 188 residents in ten counties across WA State.
The WA State Permanent Supportive Housing Perceptions and Community Health (PerCH) Survey asked residents about:
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- Perceptions of substance use in housing, and related service needs and policies
- Knowledge of overdose response and naloxone access
- Community relationships, isolation, and sense of empowerment
This webinar presented results from the survey and identified potential strategies to address overdose and substance use in these programs, and better support residents who use drugs.
In this webinar we’ll explore:
- What is safe supply?
- Recent research on people’s preferences for different safe supply models.
- What people say about the potential benefits of different models of safe supply including reduced overdose risk and criminal activity.
This survey is conducted every two years to learn from SSP participants about their:
- substance use patterns,
- health behaviors,
- service use,
- and health care needs.
Youth overdose deaths continue to rise due to fentanyl, despite a decline in youth substance use overall. This webinar will discuss Safety First, a comprehensive school-based curriculum created to educate youth about substance use that includes prevention and harm reduction messaging. Safety First was originally created by the Drug Policy Alliance and has since been substantially revised and is now led by the REACH Lab at Stanford, overseen by Dr. Bonnie Halpern-Felsher.
The purpose of Safety First is to encourage youth to abstain from use, but this curriculum also includes a clear harm-reduction message for youth who are experimenting or using, and provides students with scientifically accurate information to empower them to quit and/or reduce harm, should they choose to continue to use.
This webinar will discuss:
- An overview of the Safety First curriculum
- Why harm reduction education for youth is especially important in the context of rising overdose deaths
- An example of what harm reduction education for youth looks like in WA State
- How and why harm reduction can and should be provided alongside prevention messaging
Presenters:
Dr. Bonnie Halpern-Felsher
Professor and Founder/Director, REACH Lab, Stanford University Dr. Halpern-Felsher is a developmental psychologist with additional training in adolescent and young adult health. Funded by the NIH and many foundations, her research has focused on understanding and reducing adolescent and young adult tobacco use, alcohol and marijuana use, and risky sexual behavior.
Alexie Orr
Foundation for Youth Resiliency and Engagement (FYRE) Alexie is an advocate for youth and young adults at FYRE, a community-based nonprofit in rural Washington. Alexie is a certified Recovery Coach, Peer Counselor, and WSU alum. She directly applies harm reduction practices in her work with young people who are experimenting with drugs, in active use, and/or who are at risk of use.
Learn about the WA State Community Drug Checking Network (CDCN), a partnership of organizations around WA State that provide community-level drug checking and related harm reduction services.
Community drug checking is an evidence-informed harm reduction intervention in which small samples of drugs or drug residue can be analyzed via multiple technologies to determine the chemical components of the sample. Drug checking is also a powerful engagement tool when it is offered along with safer use supplies, overdose prevention education, harm reduction services, and referrals or linkages to care. Learn about the technologies used, different models of drug checking, why drug checking is important and get an introduction to WA state’s CDCN drug checking data.
Hear directly from a community drug checking site about how they do their work.
Resources
Drug Trends with Caleb Banta-Green, PhD, MPH, MSW, provided an overview of on current drug trends in Washington State with a focus on fentanyl, methamphetamine and overdoses. Data sources included qualitative interviews and surveys with people who use drugs, drug testing results from community drug checking networks at harm reduction locations, police evidence testing, and overdose mortality.
In this webinar:
• What is harm reduction?
• What is the history of the US response to drugs and harm reduction
• How does harm reduction look in practice?
• How has harm reduction changed over time?
Presenters:
Emalie Huriaux, MPH
Program Manager, Office of Infectious Disease
WA State Dept of Health
Emalie is responsible for the Office of Infectious Disease’s efforts to address its work through a syndemic framework; integrated HIV, STI, and viral hepatitis testing; hepatitis C prevention efforts and coordination of Hep C Free WA; and support and promotion of syringe service programs, overdose education, and naloxone distribution. Prior to this role, Emalie worked on federal and California-based policy advocacy to support harm reduction and viral hepatitis elimination efforts; worked at the San Francisco Department of Public Health as the Viral Hepatitis & Integration Coordinator; and worked for several years as a health educator and frontline worker for harm reduction and sexual health programs.
Lupe Hurtado
Peer counselor, Opioid Treatment Network at Downtown Emergency Services Center, a low barrier MOUD program located in Seattle
Lupe Hurtado strives to break barriers, uplift marginalized voices, and represent as a BIPOC woman with lived experience.
Originally from Seattle, Lupe is a harm reductionist whose first introduction to harm reduction was at 19, receiving supplies and woundcare. She works to bring harm reduction knowledge and support to underserved and marginalized communities.
She has worked at the Tacoma Needle Exchange as a community health outreach worker, providing needles as well as naloxone training in Pierce County. Lupe sits on the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department Opioid Task Force Anti-Stigma Committee. She has volunteered with the Key Project, a community art project on the injustices experienced by people who use drugs and those who have lost loved ones to overdose.
For this webinar we’re partnering with the WA Dept of Health and Dr. Sharon Stancliff of the NY State Dept of Health to answer frequently asked questions about naloxone and overdose response.
Webinar topics:
- Where can I can naloxone in WA State? Over-the-counter, insurance coverage, free options
- How many doses of naloxone may be needed for an opioid overdose?
- What do we know about high-dose naloxone products?
- Overdose response: rescue breathing and/or chest compressions?
- Does naloxone work on fentanyl?
- And many more
Presenters:
Sharon Stancliff, MD, DFASAM, FAAFP
Associate Medical Director of Harm Reduction in Health Care
Office of the Medical Director, AIDS Institute
New York State Department of Health
Chelsie Porter MPH
Drug User Health Team
Overdose Education and Naloxone Distribution Program
WA Dept of Health
Drug User Health Team
Overdose Education and Naloxone Distribution Program
WA Dept of Health
This webinar describes the responses to qualitative interviews with 30 people in Washington State who use fentanyl.
Responses reveal that fentanyl use exacerbates and complicates the gap between what people want and need and what is available to support their health. For many interview participants, continued fentanyl use was described as a rational response to the combination of their social reality and their practical access to care. Current systems of care around housing, behavioral health, medical services, or first responder services, were not designed with the potency, risk of overdose, and robust withdrawal symptoms of a substance like fentanyl. Right now, medical treatment for pain and support to address opioid dependence are more difficult to access than unregulated fentanyl.
Naloxone vending machines are an innovative way to prevent overdose deaths. In this panel Joseph Hunter from the North Central Accountable Communities of Health and Thea Oliphant-Wells with Public Health-Seattle & King County will talk about their processes for setting up naloxone vending machines in their communities.
In this panel Joseph and Thea will address:
– Why naloxone vending machines?
– Vending machine locations and partnerships
– Nuts and bolts of the machines and supplies
– How this fits into an overall strategy to prevent overdose deaths
In this session, experts from the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance and Tacoma Needle Exchange/Dave Purchase Project share their strategies and answer your questions about how to effectively distribute safer smoking supplies and maximize engagement opportunities.
Hear from these programs about:
- Why hand out safer smoking supplies?
- Distribution 101: How to do it
- Response from participants
- Lessons learned
- Challenges and positive impacts
In Spring 2021 Alison Newman, ADAI and Sierra Teadt, UW MPH student, conducted qualitative interviews with 27 WA State syringe services participants who use methamphetamine.
This webinar covers findings and key themes of the interviews, including:
- Interest in reducing or stopping methamphetamine use
- What would help people change their use
- What barriers prevent people from changing their use
- What services would help improve health and quality of life
- Cross-cutting themes
- Recommendations for how to support people who use methamphetamine
The criminal legal system has an outsized impact on people with opioid use disorder. Even after incarceration, criminal legal fees and fines can pose barriers to financial stability, employment, and housing.
In this webinar Dr. Alexes Harris will speak about her research on the ways that sentenced fines and fees often burden disadvantaged populations and place them under greater supervision of the criminal legal system. Alexes Harris, Ph.D., is the Presidential Term Professor and Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington. Her research fundamentally centers on issues of inequality, poverty and race in United States’ criminal legal systems.
To provide personal context, Bill Schrader, UW Law School student, will speak about his own experience as someone who had opioid use disorder and related criminal legal involvement, including substantial criminal fees and fines after release.
Hepatitis C Treatment in WA: Lummi Tribal Health Center & Statewide HCV Elimination Plan, March 2021
Washington State has committed to eliminate HCV by 2030. In this webinar you will learn about:
- The Lummi Tribal Health Center’s approach to integrating HCV testing and treatment into their harm reduction program.
Data from the Department of Health on hepatitis C in WA State. - Statewide plan for hepatitis C elimination, including efforts to improve access to testing, linkage to care, and treatment medications for priority populations.
Speakers:
- Stephanie Rey, BS, MAMS & Michaela Hooper, BA, Lummi Tribal Health Center
- Emalie Huriaux, MPH & Jon Stockton, MHA, Washington State Department of Health, Office of Infectious Disease
Methamphetamine use and methamphetamine-involved deaths are increasing in Washington State. This webinar, held on January 19, 2021, reviewed current WA State data on methamphetamine use and offered practical strategies to work more effectively with individuals who use methamphetamine, including how to:
- Understand motivations and patterns of use and how methamphetamine affects behavior
- Have stigma-free conversations that build trust
- Work with challenging behaviors like paranoia, self-harm, and, risk-taking
- Promote harm reduction approaches to improve health and reduce deaths
Speakers
- Peter Cleary, Project NEON (Needle and Sex Education Outreach Network)
- Susan Kingston, Former Methamphetamine Specialist at Public Health – Seattle & King County, now at University of Washington, Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute (ADAI)
- Alison Newman, University of Washington, Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute (ADAI)