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Shifting the paradigm: physician-authorized, student-led efforts to provide harm reduction services amidst legislative opposition

BACKGROUND: For over 30 years, syringe services programs (SSPs) have served as an efficacious intervention for the prevention of HIV and Hepatitis C transmission among persons who use drugs. Despite a strong body of evidence for the effectiveness of SSPs as a preventative public health measure, nume...

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Autores principales: McMullen, Timothy P., Naeim, Mahan, Newark, Carol, Oliphant, Haden, Suchard, Jeffrey, Banimahd, Faried
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7992799/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33761954
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13011-021-00362-1
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author McMullen, Timothy P.
Naeim, Mahan
Newark, Carol
Oliphant, Haden
Suchard, Jeffrey
Banimahd, Faried
author_facet McMullen, Timothy P.
Naeim, Mahan
Newark, Carol
Oliphant, Haden
Suchard, Jeffrey
Banimahd, Faried
author_sort McMullen, Timothy P.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: For over 30 years, syringe services programs (SSPs) have served as an efficacious intervention for the prevention of HIV and Hepatitis C transmission among persons who use drugs. Despite a strong body of evidence for the effectiveness of SSPs as a preventative public health measure, numerous local and state governments in the United States continue to resist the establishment of new SSPs and aggressively pursue the closure of those already in operation. COMMENTARY: In Orange County, California, local officials have repeatedly mobilized in opposition of the establishment of syringe access – thereby hindering access to healthcare for thousands of predominantly unhoused individuals. The county was previously served by the Orange County Needle Exchange Program from 2016 until 2018 when a civil suit brought by the Orange County Board of Supervisors resulted in the closure of the program. For more than 2 years, persons who inject drugs in Orange County lacked reliable access to clean syringes, placing them at increased risk for contracting HIV and Hepatitis C. Here, we comment on the ongoing effort to restore syringe access in Orange County. This collaborative physician-directed endeavor has brought together students and community volunteers to provide vital harm reduction services to a remarkably underserved population. Since the reestablishment of syringe access in Orange County by the Harm Reduction Institute, new legal barriers have arisen including the passage of new municipal legislation banning the operation of syringe exchanges. We are well-equipped to overcome these obstacles. This work serves as an affirmation of assertions made by previous authors regarding the unique qualifications of medical & graduate students as effective harm reductionists. CONCLUSION: Harm reduction services are vital to the health and well-being of people who use drugs. The provision of these services should not be impeded by legislative interference by municipal, county, or state governments.
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spelling pubmed-79927992021-03-25 Shifting the paradigm: physician-authorized, student-led efforts to provide harm reduction services amidst legislative opposition McMullen, Timothy P. Naeim, Mahan Newark, Carol Oliphant, Haden Suchard, Jeffrey Banimahd, Faried Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy Commentary BACKGROUND: For over 30 years, syringe services programs (SSPs) have served as an efficacious intervention for the prevention of HIV and Hepatitis C transmission among persons who use drugs. Despite a strong body of evidence for the effectiveness of SSPs as a preventative public health measure, numerous local and state governments in the United States continue to resist the establishment of new SSPs and aggressively pursue the closure of those already in operation. COMMENTARY: In Orange County, California, local officials have repeatedly mobilized in opposition of the establishment of syringe access – thereby hindering access to healthcare for thousands of predominantly unhoused individuals. The county was previously served by the Orange County Needle Exchange Program from 2016 until 2018 when a civil suit brought by the Orange County Board of Supervisors resulted in the closure of the program. For more than 2 years, persons who inject drugs in Orange County lacked reliable access to clean syringes, placing them at increased risk for contracting HIV and Hepatitis C. Here, we comment on the ongoing effort to restore syringe access in Orange County. This collaborative physician-directed endeavor has brought together students and community volunteers to provide vital harm reduction services to a remarkably underserved population. Since the reestablishment of syringe access in Orange County by the Harm Reduction Institute, new legal barriers have arisen including the passage of new municipal legislation banning the operation of syringe exchanges. We are well-equipped to overcome these obstacles. This work serves as an affirmation of assertions made by previous authors regarding the unique qualifications of medical & graduate students as effective harm reductionists. CONCLUSION: Harm reduction services are vital to the health and well-being of people who use drugs. The provision of these services should not be impeded by legislative interference by municipal, county, or state governments. BioMed Central 2021-03-24 /pmc/articles/PMC7992799/ /pubmed/33761954 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13011-021-00362-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Commentary
McMullen, Timothy P.
Naeim, Mahan
Newark, Carol
Oliphant, Haden
Suchard, Jeffrey
Banimahd, Faried
Shifting the paradigm: physician-authorized, student-led efforts to provide harm reduction services amidst legislative opposition
title Shifting the paradigm: physician-authorized, student-led efforts to provide harm reduction services amidst legislative opposition
title_full Shifting the paradigm: physician-authorized, student-led efforts to provide harm reduction services amidst legislative opposition
title_fullStr Shifting the paradigm: physician-authorized, student-led efforts to provide harm reduction services amidst legislative opposition
title_full_unstemmed Shifting the paradigm: physician-authorized, student-led efforts to provide harm reduction services amidst legislative opposition
title_short Shifting the paradigm: physician-authorized, student-led efforts to provide harm reduction services amidst legislative opposition
title_sort shifting the paradigm: physician-authorized, student-led efforts to provide harm reduction services amidst legislative opposition
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7992799/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33761954
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13011-021-00362-1
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