A Community Responds to the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Case Study in Protecting the Health and Human Rights of People Who Use Drugs
A Community Responds to the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Case Study in Protecting the Health and Human Rights of People Who Use Drugs
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DOI：
10.1007/s11524-020-00465-3
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发表时间：
2020-07-27
影响因子：
6.6
通讯作者：
Vlahov, David
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Heimer, Robert;McNeil, Ryan;Vlahov, David
有效应对全球流行病需要地方行动。在面临流行病或类似紧急情况时，吸毒者社区面临的风险来自于他们持续吸毒、确保对吸毒和相关疾病进行治疗的能力下降、缺乏获得预防性卫生服务的机会以及无家可归、街头治安和刑事司法介入的现实。在此，我们记录了一个联盟的人谁使用毒品，倡导者，服务提供者和学者实施解决方案，以减少这些风险在市和州一级的重点纽黑文和康涅狄格州的努力。该联盟确定了处于风险中的社区：需要获得减少伤害服务的活跃用户，需要获得药物治疗的人，需要改善卫生条件的无家可归者和边缘居住者，从事性工作的人，以及需要释放的被监禁者。描述每一种风险的部分展示了联盟如何在大流行的早期阶段，在官方倡议之前采取先发制人的行动，以制定改善的风险降低解决方案。所讨论的成果包括已经克服或仍然存在障碍的情况。
Effective responses to a global pandemic require local action. In the face of a pandemic or similar emergencies, communities of people who use drugs face risks that result from their ongoing drug use, reduced ability to secure treatment for drug use and correlated maladies, lack of access to preventive hygiene, and the realities of homelessness, street-level policing, and criminal justice involvement. Herein, we document the efforts of a coalition of people who use drugs, advocates, service providers, and academics to implement solutions to reduce these risks at a municipal and state level focusing on New Haven and the State of Connecticut. This coalition identified the communities at risk: active users needing access to harm reduction services, persons in treatment needing access to their medications, the homeless and marginally housed needing improved hygiene, people engaged in sex work, and the incarcerated needing release from custody. The section describing each of the risks demonstrates how the coalition acted preemptively at early stages of the pandemic, ahead of official initiatives, to develop ameliorative risk reduction solutions. Outcomes discussed include instances in which obstacles were overcome or still remain.