Relier théorie et pratique : meilleures pratiques de la réduction des risques de spectre complet
Youth RISE explore des stratégies de réduction des risques mettant l’accent sur l’inclusion, la prise en compte des déterminants sociaux de la santé et l’adaptation à divers contextes. Pour en savoir plus, en anglais, veuillez lire les informations ci-dessous.
Youth RISE is an international network of diverse young people who use drugs (YPWUD) and/or young people directly impacted by punitive drug policies. The organization advocates for the human rights, health, and well-being of this key population by promoting meaningful youth engagement in decision-making bodies, as well as local, national, regional, and international advocacy. Through capacity building aims to enable its membership to become experts in drug policy reform and Full Spectrum Harm Reduction (FSHR) advocacy and implementation. Youth RISE also supports youth-led initiatives and strengthening inclusive YPWUD community collaboration and develops tools and resources to support structural transformations in drug policy and harm reduction practices.
The organization’s advocacy strategy, developed in 2023, serves as the organizational compass, providing a comprehensive framework that aligns its projects and activities with its overall goals and mission to create impactful change while optimizing the use of valuable resources.
The strategy is founded on four key advocacy goals:
- Representation and Elevation of YPWUD in Decision-Making Bodies Worldwide
- Knowledge Management: Education, Research, and Data Collection
- Full Spectrum Harm Reduction (FSHR)
- Criminal Justice Reform
In this context, Youth RISE will focus on advocacy goal 3, which aims to develop and promote FSHR. This concept captures an inclusive, intersectional, and human rights-based approach that seeks to address and integrate the structural, social, legal, and political determinants that impact the lives and well-being of people who use drugs (PWUD), contributing to the perpetuation of inequalities in all aspects. It emphasizes that harm reduction should be for everyone, encompassing all drugs, all routes of use, and all people, no matter what their circumstances are. At the same time, it highlights how harm reduction efforts entail not only health services, but also mental health, housing, and social support systems as part of a holistic approach. By prioritizing intersectionality, Youth RISE emphasizes that diverse experiences—rooted in factors such as gender, socioeconomic status, and structural inequities—are central to its advocacy.
Following this advocacy goal, Youth RISE is developing the FSHR project, designed to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of its definition and principles, among young people, drug policy reform and harm reduction advocates, peers, policymakers, health and social care providers, educators, community leaders, researchers, and other stakeholders. This project is divided into a set of activities that include the publication of an FSHR statement by YPWUD and the production of a digital toolkit, which will include this report.
One of the main objectives of the present report, Connecting Theory, and Practice: Report on the Best Full Spectrum Harm Reduction Practices Survey, is to gather insights and experiences from PWUD including young people, harm reduction practitioners, peers, policy advocates, social workers, and researchers worldwide, with a particular focus on the Global South perspectives, while still ensuring the inclusion of the Global North, capturing challenges, innovative strategies, and best practices that address the wide-ranging needs of YPWUD.
This specific focus on the Global South is due to the greater challenges faced by the countries within this region concerning social, economic, and political aspects, such as limited resources and deeper structural barriers (Duggan et al., 2021). By capturing the experiences of those involved in harm reduction efforts through a global survey, this report aims to get a better understanding of the particular gaps that still exist in these regions and explore potential practical examples of interventions that might be possible to adapt to other contexts.
The current report is committed to presenting key insights derived from the experiences and perspectives of the survey respondents across different contexts, namely Latin America, North and East Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America. The data collected shed light on innovative and contextualized interventions while identifying actionable strategies to advance harm reduction practices. It is important to note that this report emphasizes the work, experience, and efforts of those who are directly or have engaged in harm reduction initiatives, providing a qualitative understanding of harm reduction practices while serving as a complement to academic research on this matter (Boucher, et al., 2017; Rigoni, et al., 2021). Furthermore, the report seeks to also contribute to the ongoing discussions about harm reduction, placing inclusivity at its center.
The report is divided into six sections:
- A brief description of Youth RISE’s FSHR statement
- An overview of the survey’s Best Full Spectrum Harm Reduction Practices framework
- A characterization of the participants’ demographics
- Quantitative and qualitative insights of FSHR
- A summary of main findings, practical implementation examples, and its adaptation to different contexts
- A final section providing recommendations and overall conclusions