In late October, 2016, we sat down at the PDIS studios with Terrell Jones of the New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE). Terrell is NYHRE's Outreach and Advocacy Manager.
The organization now known as the New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE; http://www.nyhre.org/) began in the late 1980s as an underground syringe provision service called the Bronx/Harlem Needle Exchange. Most of its founders were members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), the dynamic group formed in the 1980s to pressure federal, state, and local agencies to improve their neglectful response to the HIV epidemic. In July 1992, NYHRE became one of the first illegal syringe exchange groups to become legal under a waiver of New York State’s drug paraphernalia laws. Today, NYHRE offers a range of services and programming with the goal of the promotion of the health, safety and well-being of marginalized, low-income persons who use drugs or engage in sex work, along with their loved ones and their communities. Along with syringe exchange, these services include overdose prevention training and distribution of naloxone overdose reversal kits; referral to voluntary drug detoxification and drug treatment programs, HIV and Hepatitis C testing, counseling, and care referral; support groups; and evidenced-based HIV risk reduction interventions. NYHRE also works in general health promotion, education, and outreach; and people seeking NYHRE services can be connected through its counselors to basic health mental and physical wellness options across the city. In its more political work, NYHRE advocates for housing and social services needed by vulnerable populations whose unstable housing situations place them at high risk for HIV and Hepatitis C.
Much of this work is performed by trained individuals -- known as "peers." Like the people they now serve, many peers once had lived troubled lives of economic insecurity, homelessness, and problematic drug use, but began their recovery with harm reduction. NYHRE’s peer-based model of operation is similar to ones found in organizations across the country which maintain the philosophy that community empowerment is best achieved by people within the community. Interestingly, this model shies away from referring to the people they serve as "clients", but instead refer to them as "participants" or "members."
After years of hard living, self-destructive drug use, and the emotional trauma of childhood abuse, Terrell Jones initiated his own recovery and began his life in harm reduction as one of these peers, working also with VOCAL-NY. Along with his work in NYHRE, today he is the Senior Co-chair of the Peer Network of New York, a newly-formed labor union advocating for the professionalization, training, and improved compensation for harm reduction peers.
Joined by students in my Columbia University seminar on Race, Drug Policy, and Harm Reduction, Terrell and I talked about drug policy, mass incarceration, the politics of stigma, and harm reduction in Black communities. Along the way Terrell described how he came to harm reduction, how he repaired his strained relationship with his mother, and how he ended up at the White House to advocate for a public health approach to drug use.
