Rebuilding a Safe Haven for Future Crises

Getting to know our communities and bringing health to all members of our communities is one of the goals of Intercambios Puerto Rico's team.  Although most of our programs focused on specific marginalized and vulnerable populations, we believe in and strive to bring health promotion to communities in general.  Health is a human right and should be available and accesible to all members of society.  The services that Intercambios provides, as a harm reduction organization, are health services that should be accesible to all members of society, regardless of specific life circunstances, but are not.  For that reason, we hold periodic health fairs in the towns our team regularly visits during our mobile harm reductions services.  These health fairs are a great opportunity to meet community members, create opportunities for collaboration with other health providers and health organizations and for our team to engage the community in educational discussions about the realities of drug use from a humans rights and social justice perspective.  It is an opportunity to focus on health promotion and prevention from another angle and demistify the image some folks might have about what syringe exchange program actually does.  It is a moment to celebrate and create community!

Here we leave with a few satisfied faces of our team members, excited to interact and work with our communities!

Your support is crucial to the continuation of this work! Thank you for your continued support!

Links:

• Golpe a la rehabilitacion de las mujeres dentro del sistema de C
• Las mujeres consumidoras de drogas necesitan nuestra atencion

At Intercambios Puerto Rico, Inc., we never stop our search to improve the quality and offer of services available to our participants. We are finally able to share with you that our long-held dream to open a harm reduction health clinic is finally become a reality. The health and medical services are being provided at our movil unit “La Movil”, by one of the newest members of our team, Dr. Elisa Pujals. Dr. Pujals is a family doctor that now joins our team of psychologists, a nurse, a clinical social worker and a case manager. These amazing team provides primary health services, along with vein care and psychosocial services, and will soon be able to provide drug substitution treatment in a harm reduction caring environment to participants who needed and wanted. In the near future, these services will be available, both at our movil unit and at our fixed site. We already have a location for our new clinic/office space in the town of Fajardo. This will be the first harm reduction clinic in the island offering primary health and full psychosocial services to our participants from a harm reduction model where they are they comprehensive needs are listening to and meet without judgment, prejudice, discrimination, or shaming. We share below some pictures with you of how this is coming along. This is perhaps the most ambitious project we have undertaking with the support of our partners at Direct Relief.  This clinic specifically aims to cover the medical and mental health needs of drug users, homeless individuals, sex workers, but will also be available to the community in general. We aspire for it to be a safe space for our participants and inspiration for other services providers who may want to incorporate harm reduction principals into their practice and workspaces but have a hard time imagining what that might look like.

We also started a project that focuses on providing education and prevention services to youth, immigrants and the LGBTTQI+ community in the island. As part of this effort, Intercambios’ team will be offering workshops and talks about safe sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and drug use to share scientific evidence-based information to these communities, so they make informed decisions about their practices.

We thank you for your continued support and ask that you help us spread the word about these exciting news! In order to sustain these efforts, we need the help of people like you! It takes a village!

Links:

• Menos prejuicio, mas recuperacion
• Advocating for the human rights of people who use drug
• News article - Challenges suffered by opioid drug users in PR