Join us for South Southwest ATTC's fifth Spotlight Webinar with our Educational Consortium partner school, the Houston Community College for: "Recovery and Harm Reduction."

Over the last two decades, our field has witnessed the rise of Recovery Advocacy and the simultaneous codifying of recovery support services as an evidence-based practice. Yet, recovery identity is inextricably linked with former, and in some instances, ongoing lived experience with substance use.. Harm reduction services, often overlooked as a community resource, provide care to people who use drugs and those with substance use disorder. Further, harm reduction services are scientifically proven to reduce disease burden within public and population health domains. It is important to distinguish harm reduction as a part of, rather than apart from, recovery.

This presentation will facilitate participants’ ability to distinguish harm reduction as a part of, rather than apart from, recovery. We will examine the social norms that influence attitudes and explore the overlap of harm reduction principles across the continuum of care, with a focus on recovery-orientation to reduce effects of morbidity/mortality. After the presentation, attendees should be able to:

• describe basic principles of harm reduction
• verbalize overlapping principles between recovery and harm reduction
• identify positive public health outcomes associated with harm reduction

Wednesday May 24th

1:00 - 2:30 pm (CT)

Register Today!

Continuing Education: 

Earn a certificate of attendance and 2 free CEU's toward Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC). 

Additional Information:

• Establishing Context
  • Examination of the current crisis related to the history of social response to substance use. Unfortunately, social norms and related attitudes have historically polarized the two outlying recovery identities, using versus not, rather than celebrating positive changes within the non-linear spectrums of substance use experience among individual
  • Overview of harm reduction. In this section we learn the basic principles of harm reduction. We also learn the core pillars that create the entire framework. 
  • Explore populations and service contexts most appropriate for harm reduction strategies. People engaging in harm reduction services are statistically more likely to pursue help with initiating and remaining in treatment, establish and maintain a self-defined pathway to recovery, and experience more satisfying quality of life.
• The Convergence of Recovery and Harm Reduction
  • Discussion of the historical polarization of Recovery and Harm Reduction due to abstinence- based ideologies. This institutionalized, all-or-nothing paradox has created deadly gaps in the continuum of care for people who use drugs; ignoring established research on how many attempts people make before establishing recovery as they define it.
  • Demonstrate convergence between harm reduction and recovery principles using a taxonomical framework. We literally could not be people in recovery today if we had not been people who used substances first. These are not mutually exclusive concepts, but it is important to distinguish each as having nuances of specificity that should be reserved, while finding ways to assimilate both equitably.
  • Provide examples of tangible implications in current service delivery contexts to demonstrate harm reduction as secondary/tertiary recovery.  Minimally, harm reduction can be used as a tool to explore recovery; optimally, harm reduction saves lives.
• Positive Public Health Outcomes Related to Harm Reduction
  • Global and Historical Data; The current landscape of substance-related mortality beckons us to explore the historical evidence base for harm reduction principles as we look forward with recovery constructs.
  • Resources and linkages relative to the Texas Recovery Oriented System of Care - providies opportunity to deploy a comprehensive array of services that are harm-reduction proficient and recovery supportive to reduce morbidity and mortality.