Training Overview:
This training equips behavioral health providers and public health workers in the San Francisco Bay Area with practical, youth-centered approaches to engaging adolescents in harm reduction practices. Grounded in core principles, the training emphasizes meeting teens and young adults where they are at, reducing stigma, supporting autonomy, and safer decision-making.
Participants will gain a foundational understanding of how to adapt lifesaving overdose prevention interventions to adolescent and young adult populations, alongside key insights from cultural humility to teen development that directly impact engagement, communication, and risk-taking behavior. This training highlights how factors such as identity formation, peer influence, heightened sensitivity to judgment, adultism, and power imbalances shape our care and interventions with youth.
Through a combination of real-world examples, interactive discussion, and skill-building exercises, participants will learn actionable strategies to build trust, navigate conversations about substance use, and implement practical harm reduction techniques. The training also incorporates the unique context of San Francisco and surrounding communities, including local substance use trends, cultural considerations, and available resources.
By the end of the session, participants will feel more confident engaging youth in honest, nonjudgmental conversations and integrating a harm reduction framework into their everyday work with adolescents.
Prerequisite: Participants should have a baseline understanding of harm reduction principles.

Learning Objectives:

• Review harm reduction principles, development theory, and cultural humility frameworks specific to youth who use drugs.
• Explore the current challenges of youth-focused harm reduction service provision.
• Practice skills for engaging youth in conversations about safer drug use in empowering and developmentally appropriate ways.

Facilitators: Alex Filippelli, MSW (Center for Applied Research Solutions) and Danielle Raghib, PPSC, LCSW (Center for Applied Research Solutions)

Organized by the Health and Recovery Training Institute