Last night, in collaboration with the New Day Campaign, OSI-Baltimore sponsored a discussion on safe injection facilities (SIFs) as a public health strategy.
Sarah Evans (above, second from left), a senior program manager with the Open Society Foundation’s Public Health Program, talked about her experiences as the coordinator of Vancouver’s Insite, North America’s first and only legal supervised drug injection facility. She, along with Scott Nolen, director of OSI-Baltimore’s Drug Addiction Treatment program, and others, discussed the roadblocks that have prevented SIFs, which have been proven to prevent overdoses, from being more widely accepted. In particular, they discussed the role that stigma and race play in the public’s willingness to consider more robust harm reduction efforts.
On June 8th, as part of OSI’s Talking About Race series, we will present a related discussion on Harm Reduction and Communities of Color.
