Harm Reduction Strategies and Services (HRSS)

Provides services to enhance the knowledge, skills, resources, and supports for individuals, families, and communities to be safer and healthier. Service areas include impaired driving prevention campaigns, peer support programs, needle distribution programs, substitution therapies, supervised consumption facilities, and outreach and education. Website towardtheheart.com/site-locator has information about sites across BC that distribute safer sex supplies, drug use supplies, and naloxone. Runs the free Take Home Naloxone program (Narcan), which supplies opioid users with injectable naloxone kits that can be used to reverse the effects of overdoses from opioids like heroin, methadone, morphine, oxycodone, and fentanyl. Also provides naloxone training and overdose education, and approves registered distribution sites. Offers online naloxone training at www.naloxonetraining.com. Also lists health authority-issued drug alerts throughout the province. In the Interior Health and Fraser Health regions, individuals can receive toxic drug and health alerts by text; to sign up, text the word JOIN to 253787 (ALERTS). HRSS provides the structure to facilitate coordination between the Ministry of Health, Provincial Health Services Authority, First Nations Health Authority, the regional health authorities, and other key stakeholders in work related to harm reduction.