Training Overview:
This training will give harm reduction workers a background of the history and policies related to many of the health disparities faced by people who use drugs, especially those who also identify as people of color, women, and/or LGBTQ. Through a combination of discussion, shared experiences, and activities, training participants will explore how criminalization and exploitation has created a system that causes certain groups to have worse health outcomes and a lower quality of life. Participants will learn how to use this knowledge and build programming that interrupts these oppressive systems and focus service provision to be as open and inclusive as possible, to help reduce the harms stemming from the racialized war on drugs.
Training Objectives:
- Discuss how the prison industrial complex and war on drugs impact communities of color, from the 1970’s to the present.
- Identify three ways structural racism and capitalism result in treating people differently within the justice system.
- Discuss how to integrate a harm reduction approach ranging from service provision, policy making, and community organizing.
- Explore strategies a program can try when supporting marginalized or oppressed people.
Facilitator: National Harm Reduction Coalition
Organized By: The Harm Reduction Training Institute
