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IN THIS ISSUE:

  • Past and Upcoming Events

  • April Meeting Themes

  • Featured Resources

  • Research Paper of the Month

  • Research

  • In the News

  • Community Updates and Events

  • Ways to Get Involved

PAST AND UPCOMING EVENTS

PAST WEBINAR EVENTS:

  • On Monday, April 4th, the NSS-CoP hosted the workshop: Wound Care Workshop for Non-Clinicians, featuring: Erin Telegdi, a Registered Nurse practising at the Moss Park Consumption and Treatment Service, Casey House Hospital for HIV Care, and the Wound Healing Clinic at Women's College Hospital, and Sunny Sultan, a Harm Reduction Worker and Activist currently working at Street Health and Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre. CLICK HERE for access to the webinar recording and resources.
     
  • On Thursday, April 28th, we hosted an incredible panel of pharmacists involved with safer supply programs across the country. CLICK HERE for the Pharmacist Roundtable on Safer Supply webinar recording and the French transcription.

UPCOMING APRIL EVENTS:
Weekly Drop-In Meetings:

  • Members are welcome to join our weekly meeting drop-in meetings. It is an interdisciplinary group with prescribers, pharmacists, harm reduction workers, policy folks, nurses, people who use drugs, etc. Right now, we are meeting on Thursdays at 12pm EDT. Zoom Link

Upcoming Webinar Events:

  • Join us on Thursday, May 26th at 12pm EDT for a presentation from Nancy Henderson (RN, BScN)Safer Supply Program Manager at the 360 Degree Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic. Nancy's presentation will discuss the need for safer supply and decriminalization and highlight emerging evidence from current research and practice. Audience members are welcome to submit their questions in the Q & A box. This is a public event. English closed captioning, and French written transcription will be provided. Webinar Registration Link.
APRIL MEETING THEMES

Meeting Minutes:

Meeting minutes can be found in the meeting notes and resources folder on the National Safer Supply Community of Practice
Google Drive.

April 7th, 2022:

  • Primary funding sources of safer supply
  • Casey House Consumption Site – with an inhalation room
  • Check-in times: How are no-show clients approached upon their return to the program?

April 14th, 2022:

  • Is there legislation around pharmacies refusing to dispense?
  • Substance Use Disorder
  • Crystal meth testing positive for fentanyl and benzos
  • ODSP application process

April 21st, 2022:

  • Fair Price Pharma
  • Happenings with the drug supply
FEATURED RESOURCES
  • Harm Reduction Fundamentals: A toolkit for service providers: This toolkit from CATIE provides foundational information on harm reduction for service providers working with people who use drugs (including support workers, outreach workers, nurses, and workers with lived and living experience). The toolkit is free to access and is available to anyone to use or share for personal learning, organizational trainings and/or other capacity-building efforts. There is also a great Harm Reduction Fundamentals: Video Series that accompanies the toolkit. CATIE also has an excellent Safer Substance Use: Video Series for people who use drugs and for service providers, to walk through the basic steps for how to inject, smoke and snort drugs as safely as possible. The videos cover how to prepare and consume a variety of drugs that are commonly injected, smoked or snorted.
     
  • Fair Price Pharma Inhalation Diacetylmorphine Operational Guide: The purpose of this document is to provide operational guidance to health authorities, medical practices, clinics, co-ops, OPS, NGO, SIS, etc. who wish to provide Fair Price Pharma (FPP) inhalable diacetylmorphine (DAM) to their clients. Note this is available in all five BC health regions and FNHA.
     
  • Decision Support Tool for Granting Unsupervised Doses: The Équipe de soutien clinique et organisationnel en dépendance et itinérance in Montréal recently released a decision support tool for granting unsupervised doses. This tool is meant to help guide prescriber deliberations over the decision of whether to grant unsupervised doses. The questions included allow for an objective and person-centered view of the recovery process.
     
  • EACH+EVERY Workplace Substance Use Policy: EACH+EVERY recently released their new model workplace policy: substance use-related code of conduct. The purpose of this document is to establish standards of conduct for our interactions and relationships at work, as they relate to substance use and its intersections. The document is compiled by leadership of the following organizations: EACH+EVERY, Portage Legal Services, and Workers for Ethical Substance Use Policy.
     
  • Crackdown - Episode 31: Love, Death and Benzodope: There is a brand-new Crackdown Podcast episode available titled "Love, Death and Benzodope". Here is a brief description of the episode: "Can Martin and Laura's fairy tale love story survive benzodope – the next lethal era of the drug war? British Columbia has seen a surge of unusual overdoses - including Martin and Laura’s. People are passing out for hours, losing their memories, and getting robbed and assaulted. And deaths have spiked. Again. But our community is responding. Harm Reduction workers like Trey Helten at the Vancouver Overdose Prevention Society are coming up with ways to keep people OD-ing on benzodope safe and alive – all without adequate resources or space. You can donate to Vancouver OPS here. Benzo contamination of the drug supply continues to get worse. Almost half of the illicit opioids sampled in B.C. now have benzos in them. More than 100,000 of us depend on this street drug supply - including Martin Steward and Laura Shaver. After withstanding so many other crises, now Martin and Laura need to survive benzodope – a scary new challenge confronting their decade-strong relationship and their work as drug user activists. But what do we do now that so many of us are wired to benzos? How much longer can we wait for safe supply?"
RESEARCH PAPER OF THE MONTH

Boyd, J., et al. (2022). Mothers Who Use Drugs: Closing the Gaps in Harm Reduction Response Amidst the Dual Epidemics of Overdose and Violence in a Canadian Urban Setting | American Journal of Public Health

Highlights:

  • Participants' substance use and overdose risk (e.g., injecting alone) was shaped by fear of institutional and partner scrutiny and loss (or feared loss) of child custody or reunification.
  • Findings indicate that punitive policies and institutional practices that frame women who use drugs as unfit parents continue to negatively shape the lives of women, most significantly among Indigenous participants.
  • Non-punitive policies, including access to safe, nontoxic drug supplies, are critical first steps to decreasing women's overdose risk alongside gender-specific and culturally informed harm-reduction responses, including community-based, peer-led initiatives to maintain parent-child relationships.

Have a question that you’d like to ask? Email us: safersupplyon@gmail.com or send a message via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.

RESEARCH

We encourage NSS-CoP members to email safersupplyon@gmail.com with submissions to include in our newsletter. Content examples include but are not limited to community-led projects, peer-reviewed articles, grey literature, government publications, etc.

IN THE NEWS
National and General News: British Columbia: Alberta: Saskatchewan: Manitoba: Ontario: Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut: Québec (et en français s'il vous plaît!): Maritimes (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland):
COMMUNITY UPDATES & EVENTS
WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

Share your skills:

We’d like to create opportunities for skills sharing. Let us know if you would like to offer a workshop or present to the membership.

Share your successes:

Share your success stories, your reports, and safer supply resources that you develop with the NSS-CoP membership through:

How can we help? Let us know what you need! Our goal is to support you by assisting in areas around your programs, organizations, and communities!
CONTACT US

https://www.nss-aps.ca/
info@nss-aps.ca
(519) 660-0875 ext. 1264

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