Harm Reduction Coalition's Podcast

This week’s podcast focuses on International Overdose Awareness Day, August 31st. It includes interviews with Eliza Wheeler who advertises the Overdose Awareness Day Memorial March and Celebration of Life in San Francisco, Sharon Stancliff talking about the newly released Samsha toolkit http://store.samhsa.gov/product/SMA13-4742, Narcotics Unit Commander Pat Glynn talks about the role police play in reducing overdose deaths using naloxone in Quincy, Massachusetts http://vimeo.com/47686862, Nigel Brundson of HIT and Injecting Advice http://injectingadvice.com/ fills us in on the UK scene, Heather Edney, Executive Director of La Ventana Treatment Program http://www.laventanaed.com/, talks about the newly created mural ‘The Memory Lives On’ http://tinyurl.com/nol5bos and also surviving multiple overdoses and Lisa Raville Executive Director of the Harm Reduction Action Center in Denver talks about syringe exchange developments and their overdose anti-stigma work http://www.harmreductionactioncenter.org/index.html

Atlanta hosted the 2nd Southern Harm Reduction and Drug Policy Conference. Allan Clear and Hadiyah Charles talk to Robert Childs and Nab Dasgupta of the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition http://www.nchrc.org/, Mona Bennett of the Atlanta Harm Reduction Coalition, http://www.atlantaharmreduction.org/, Charles Stephens of AIDS United http://www.aidsunited.org/, Valencia Robinson of Mississippi in Action http://mississippiinaction.org/ and Mara Collins of the Kindred Healing Justice Collective http://kindredhealingjustice.org/ . Plus an awesome video featuring Mona Bennett and the Wire’s Michael K. Williams http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obqgiCl7-xg

Stephen Lewis http://www.aidsfreeworld.org/ was the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. He provided us with a blueprint for addressing HIV and global drug policy at an event “The Neglected Epidemic: Can We Get to Zero Without Drug Policy Reform?” hosted by the Harm Reduction Coalition, International Doctors for Healthy Drug Policy http://idhdp.com/ and the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy http://www.icsdp.org/ at AIDS 2012. Naina Khanna, PWN Coordinator, Director of Policy and Community Organizing, and Ije Ude, International AIDS Conference Organizer, of Positive Women’s Network http://www.pwn-usa.org/ talk about the impact of the conference on positive women in the US and the impact of positive women on the conference. And the value of having the conference in the US. This wraps up coverage from the conference. For more harm reduction highlights check out http://bit.ly/MN4EMo

Bathrooms at syringe exchange programs have always been a venue for injection. 3 different programs which have addressed the issue talk about their strategies for making their bathrooms safer. Part 1 of 2.

The overdose risk of using alone is well established. We put the message out to the drug using community that people shouldn't use alone. However there are really normal reasons as to why people like to do it. Ro Giuliano and Allan Clear explore this in the podcast.