How's the Trans-Mission?: Reflections from our Community Health Program

Introduction

At Gender Health Center, our mission comes alive in the ways we show up for one another, especially in the places where stigma, criminalization, and some systems of care have too often failed our communities.

In our work, we are asked to move beyond binaries: safe or unsafe, using or sober, healthy or unhealthy, deserving or undeserving. Instead, we begin with people as they are, recognizing their wisdom, autonomy, and right to make decisions about their own bodies and lives. It is about creating greater access to care, strengthening connection, sharing resources, and supporting conditions where people have more choices.

This September, our Community Health Program continued that work on the streets, in homes, across the region, and through new partnerships and programming. From launching our Drug Use is Non-Binary Program that expands connections to medication-assisted treatment (MAT), to participating in statewide harm reduction efforts, and getting life-affirming supplies directly into the hands of community members, we are continuing to deepen what overdose prevention and response and community care can look like.

Here’s what our team has been up to.

Drug Use is Non-Binary: Launching our new MAT Referral Programming

We are honored to receive funding for our new Drug Use is Non-Binary Program, providing education and direct pathways to support for people wanting to shift their relationship to substance use, including getting connected to Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT). We want to shoutout the experts and wisdom keepers we work with everyday through our outreach work and across the Harm Reduction Movement, including the team behind the CA Native Harm Reduction Hub, for reminding us also that culture is prevention, connection is medicine, and that much of our collective healing happens when we work together to combat stigma and shame.

We are excited to now be offering direct connection to same-day MAT services in partnership with California Bridge Connect. Our program is rooted in the understanding that drug use is non-binary, that usage lands on a spectrum and management moves in non-linear fashion. We meet one another where we're at on that spectrum without judgement, without expectation, without binaries of good/bad, user/non-user, addict/recovered.

Regional & State-wide work

This past season, we participated in the California Overdose Prevention and Harm Reduction Initiative (COPHRI) Point-in-Time (PIT) Survey, managed by The Center at Sierra Health Foundation, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), and the National Harm Reduction Coalition (NHRC). We want to thank the team at Sierra Health, the Harm Reduction Unit at the CDPH, and our technical assistants at the NHRC, and most importantly our directly impacted folks who offered their time, expertise, and trust to provide crucial insight on drug use trends and harm reduction services at this moment in time. You can learn more about the initiative and the results of last year's PIT survey here: Sierra Health Foundation: COPHRI.

This month, we also attended the Northern Regional COPHRI Convening in Sacramento, where we joined fellow harm reduction and Syringe Services Program (SSP) staff from across Northern California for two days of connection, strategic planning, and regional power-mapping.

Street Outreach & Home Deliveries

Our Syringe Services Program (SSP) outreach work is the heart of our program, and amidst new connections and programming, that work continues. This month, our outreach team connected with over 130 folks through our street outreach and home delivery programs, distributing life-affirming supplies to our folks living outside, and to Trans and BIPOC communities. As we welcome the seasons changing and upcoming cooler temperatures, we are also welcoming donations that help us continue meeting the basic needs of our community members in our outreach work. Please see our Wishlist here and continue checking back over this fall and winter season for updated requests.

Our team out and about on our mobile unit connecting with community members.

New Opportunities

Lastly, we want to uplift an opportunity for fellow harm reductionists! Our friends at the Capacity Collective just launched this year's Em Scout Carr Memorial Scholarship, Honoring the life & legacy of a beloved harm reductionist through data justice & capacity building. Last year, we had the honor of being the inaugural recipients of this scholarship, and have spent the past year working with them to redesign our database and data collection processes to align with participant dignity, worker needs, and financial sustainability. We would love to see another team of harm reductionists work with them through this scholarship!

Call to Action: Help Us Keep Showing Up

Our work is community care in action, and it takes all of us.

Don't forget - as we move into the colder fall and winter months, you can support this work by donating requested supplies through our Amazon wishlist, sharing our harm reduction resources, connecting people to our services, and challenging the stigma and shame surrounding substance use wherever it shows up.

And perhaps most importantly: keep choosing connection over stigma. Community care reminds us that there is no single pathway toward health, healing, or wellness. Our trans-mission is to keep making room for people to determine those pathways for themselves

and to make sure they have care, resources, dignity, and community alongside them as they do.