City officials in Philadelphia announced they would encourage the development of safe consumption sites (SCSs, also referred to as safe injection sites, or SIFs) that would oversee medically-supervised drug consumption and provide other services. While Vancouver, Canada, has operated two sites for more than 10 years, there are currently no SIFs operating in the US; Seattle is in the planning stages of opening a site as well.
OSI-Baltimore’s Drug Addiction Treatment Program has been working with Sarah Evans, senior program officer with OSF’s Public Health Program and OSI grantee Dr. Susan Sherman, a professor in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, to examine the idea of opening a SIF in Baltimore.
In addition to an op-ed published in the Philadelphia Inquirer last fall, Evans traveled to Philadelphia to meet and consult with many of the groups working to advance this initiative, including the Mayor’s opiate task force.
In May, Evans and Scott Nolen, director of OSI’s Drug Addiction Treatment program, participated in a discussion on SIFs as a public health strategy that OSI hosted with the New Day Campaign.
