Overview of Harm Reduction

Question 1

What is harm reduction

Answer 1

Harm reduction aims to keep people safe and minimize death, disease, and injury from high risk behaviour. Harm reduction involves a range of support services and strategies to enhance the knowledge, skills, resources, and supports for individuals, their families, and communities to be safer and healthier

Question 2

What are six principles of harm reduction

Answer 2

Pragmatism
Human rights
Focus on harms
Maximize intervention options
Priority of immediate goals
Drug user involvement

Question 3

Principles of harm reduction: Pragmatism

Answer 3

Accept that non-medical use of psychoactive or mood-altering substances is a near-universal human cultural phenomenon

Question 4

Principles of harm reduction: Human rights

Answer 4

Respect basic human dignity and rights of people who use injection drugs, including right to self-determination and informed decision making in a judgment-free context, which may include continuing to use illicit opioids and other substances

Question 5

Principles of harm reduction: Focus on harms

Answer 5

Prioritize decreasing the negative consequences of drug use to the person and others and recognize incremental changes as success

Question 6

Principles of harm reduction: Maximize intervention options

Answer 6

Recognize that there are a variety of different prevention or treatment approaches and people who use injection drugs should be able to choose and access a broad range of interventions

Question 7

Principles of harm reduction: Priority of immediate goals

Answer 7

Meet the person where they are in their drug use and address immediate needs first

Question 8

Principles of harm reduction: Drug user involvement

Answer 8

Involve individuals as an active participant in their own care and in the planning of harm reduction policies and interventions. Recognize individuals’ competency to make choices and change their own lives

Question 9

What are the four pillars of Vancouver’s Four Pillars Strategy

Answer 9

Prevention
Treatment
Harm Reduction
Enforcement

Question 10

What factors contribute to a higher risk of overdose

Answer 10

Previous opioid overdose.
Methadone prescription to an opioid naïve patient, starting methadone therapy, or tapering methadone dose.
High dose prescription opioids (>100mg morphine equivalents/day).
Opioids taken by a person with renal dysfunction and/or hepatic disease (decreased excretion or metabolism) or respiratory illness.
Opioid prescription/illicit opioid use with concurrent alcohol use, benzodiazepines, or other sedatives (i.e., respiratory depressants).
Opioids taken following a period of reduced opioid use (e.g., released from corrections facility or following period of abstinence or detoxification).
Any illicit drug use – due to the risk of fentanyl.