Transforming Our Communities, 2022

Sharing Innovations to Reduce Harms for People Who Use Drugs

On June 7-8, 2022, the Center for Community-Engaged Drug Education, Epidemiology, and Research (CEDEER) at ADAI held its third annual two-day Transforming Our Communities event, bringing participants from around the state together to hear from people with lived experience about barriers and successes in accessing compassionate and effective services, hear trends in statewide data, discuss how to decrease stigma and increase compassion when serving people who use drugs, and identify innovations and opportunities for transformations.

This year’s event also featured an online “Lived Experience” gallery, featuring responses to questions from people with lived experience of substance use.

Themes:

• Autonomy: people have the right to choose what works best for them.
• Partnering: how we can bring people in closer and walk next to each other
• Change: how norms, policies, and practices are evolving

Topics:

• Policy: how it can be informed by people with lived/living experience
• Adolescents & young adults: substance use disorder/opioid use disorder
• Changing routes of ingestion: impact on harm reduction services & engagement

Resources

• Agenda
• Slides: Justice by Geography – Implications of State v. Blake, SB 5476 | Mark Cooke (ACLU)
• Lived Experience Gallery

Watch the video from Day One