Health care experts and advocates gathered in Newark on Thursday to bring attention to the growing movement toward so-called harm reduction services to combat overdose deaths in New Jersey.
In the first annual Harm Reduction Conference, hosted by Cicatelli Associates Inc., panelists spoke about the need to de-stigmatize the services in all health care settings and provide vulnerable people the needed access to needle exchange, medical, mental health and other supports. The strategy has gotten a big boost lately, with $24 million allocated from the state’s opioid settlement agreement and the Murphy administration’s efforts to expand harm reduction centers across the state.
“We have more than doubled the number of harm reduction approved sites in the last year,” said state Health Commissioner Dr. Kaitlin Baston. “We have now expanded decriminalization of supplies. That means safer smoking supplies, that’s means other supplies that help people not get infections and not get sick. This means we can do drug checking and meeting people where they are, bringing them in for the support they need.”
Overall, there has been a recent downturn in the total number of overdose deaths in New Jersey, but Baston said the numbers have only flattened in white communities and continue to rise among Black and brown residents.
“This harm reduction care and behavioral health care needs to be integrated into primary care,” she said. “We don’t need to hold it out as separate all the time. We need primary care programs, emergency medicine, physicians, and emergency department hospitals to be doing harm reduction and treating people with addiction just like we treat everything else.”
