Harm Reduction

An infographic explaining what substance use modeling is and how it can inform policy in a simple, digestible way.

Una infografía que explica qué es el modelado del uso de sustancias y cómo puede informar las políticas de una manera sencilla y digerible.

Syndemic theory provides a framework for analyzing the relationship between social conditions and the co-occurrence of two or more disease states. In this brief report, we highlight major themes that emerged from qualitative interviews exploring how syndemic theory is being put into practice in HIV-related policy.

Syndemic Theory is a way of understanding or framing how two or more diseases occur together, how these disease interact, and the social conditions which create or allow these interactions to continue.

Drug checking services can prevent overdose by providing people who use drugs (PWUD) with an opportunity to understand the chemical content of their drugs. In this brief report, we share perspectives from clients of drug checking services in the San Francisco Bay Area. Participants described how drug checking provided a way of monitoring contaminants, promoted entry into other harm reduction services, and reduced likelihood of overdose.

There were 4,444 HIV diagnosis in California in 2021. Of those, 12% were among women. Black/African American and Latinx are disproportionately impacted.

Infographic highlighting some of the results from the 2022 California Pharmacist Survey. Pharmacists were asked about their furnishing of naloxone and syringe without an outside provider’s prescription. Includes some policy implications.

Maintaining continuity of HIV care and prevention resources is critical to the health, wellbeing, and at times survival of individuals who rely on those services. In California, disaster events and extreme conditions caused by climate change are becoming more frequent and intense, impacting many regions in what have become cycles of destruction and disruption. The […]

Supervised consumption sites (SCS) are harm reduction programs in which people who inject drugs (PWID) bring their previously obtained drugs to consume in a supervised setting. We modeled the potential impact of SCS implementation on HIV and HCV incidence among PWID in three California counties: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego and found that […]

This brief analyzes the impact of Orange County’s sterile syringe distribution program on client and community outcomes, and also assesses how its impact influenced risk of HIV and other outcomes among people who use drugs across the county.