Over the course of producing three seasons of The Response podcast, we’ve explored how natural hazards and other disruptions disproportionately impact marginalized communities at length.

But one population we haven’t discussed before is people who use drugs. There is still so much stigma associated with using illegal and legal drugs despite the fact that it’s a normal part of life for millions of people worldwide.

This year, our team at Shareable has been working with Higher Ground Harm Reduction to explore how community-based harm reduction programs (and people who use drugs) are impacted by, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from climate-related and other systems-disrupting emergencies (like the pandemic).

As part of this research, we’ve conducted several interviews and disseminated a national survey to Harm Reduction service providers, and have produced a report that will be coming later this month.

I recently spoke at length with Christine Rodriguez, the executive director of Higher Ground Harm Reduction. Among other things, we touched on her personal journey, what harm reduction actually is, how the current climate of disasters has impacted this work, and why we need to have more compassion for one another.

Next week, we’ll bring you part 2 of this special series with an audio documentary exploring the impact of disasters on harm reduction through the experiences of community service providers in California, Florida, and Puerto Rico.

Read the full article about practicing harm reduction amid COVID-19 by Tom Llewellyn at Shareable.