Society & Culture
The "culturally competent harm reduction" edition. At the Drug Policy Alliance's October 2017 conference in Atlanta, I got the chance to speak with four harm reduction and public health activists and researchers, including Lyn Ayala (Condom Program Coordinator at Washington Heights Corner Project), Zina Age (Founder & CEO, Aniz, Inc., in Atlanta, GA), Carrie Ann Lawrence (Director of the Indiana School of Public Health's Project Cultivate), and Sasanka Jinadasa (of Reframe Health and Justice, in Washington, DC). We took a beautiful Saturday morning to talk about how to define "culturally competent harm reduction," and to discuss what it should mean in a racial justice context. We also discussed the challenge of confronting structural inequality, the problem of white privilege within the harm reduction movement, and what it means to have a liberationist frame and mission in harm reduction.