President Biden has made “harm reduction” a central pillar of his plan to fight a record number of drug-related deaths, but a conservative backlash is threatening the effort. by Sheryl Gay Stolberg | New York Times Read the Full Article
In 2019, Cabell County, West Virginia faced a sharp rise in HIV infections among people who inject drugs (PWID). A new report, “Communicating During an HIV Outbreak Among People Who Inject Drugs — West Virginia 2019,” details how public health officials used communication strategies as a critical part of the Read more…
In early 2022, the CDC published a report in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) outlining findings from the HIV outbreak among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Kanawha County, West Virginia, from 2019–2021.Read the full CDC report ➔ here Key findings: CDC Recommendations: Quote from the report: “Stigma Read more…
In August 2021, the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR), alongside the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), presented the final findings from the CDC’s investigation into the Kanawha County HIV outbreak. Read the official announcement here. The CDC’s Epi-Aid Read more…
Activists in Charleston called on Mayor Amy Goodwin to declare a public health emergency. Some health providers and church leaders say the city needs to better address a cluster of HIV cases as well as the rise in opioid overdose deaths. At the city’s riverfront park, Magic Island, kids laughed Read more…
Full Article by Tim Murphy | TheBody In 2021, West Virginia passed some of the harshest syringe access restrictions in the country, setting off a wave of program shutdowns and legal uncertainty. For organizations like SOAR WV, the result was a sharp reduction in services—and a steep rise in community Read more…
Full Article by June Leffler | WV Public Broadcasting Charleston City Council passed a new ordinance restricting syringe service programs—even more tightly than state law. The new rules require programs to host public neighborhood meetings, collect 90% of distributed syringes, and face misdemeanor charges for noncompliance. The CDC and public Read more…
Full Article by Kyle Vass | Dragline (powered by ACLU-WV) ACLU-WV’s Dragline published a powerful deep-dive titled “Politics of Harm Reduction: HIV outbreak in W.Va.’s capital shows police and politicians can’t replace doctors and public health experts.” The article, written by Kyle Vass and edited by Lacey Johnson, reveals in Read more…
Full Article by Eric Eyre | Mountain State Spotlight As the pandemic forced support groups and treatment centers to scale back, West Virginia’s overdose death toll surged by over 40%—one of the sharpest spikes in the country. The CDC’s early data shows 1,147 lives lost in just 12 months, erasing Read more…
Full Article by Dan Vergano | BuzzFeed News “It’s a public health disaster.” Amid the worst HIV outbreak in the nation, Charleston’s grassroots harm reduction group SOAR is under legal fire. Instead of expanding needle exchange programs, West Virginia lawmakers are moving to criminalize them — defying CDC guidance and Read more…