Rebuilding a Safe Haven for Future Crises

At Intercambios Puerto Rico, we are committed to bringing health and harm reduction services to marginalized communities and to make visible the need to change punitive public policies that hinder access to care for those who need it the most. In the last months, as part of our efforts to deal with the COVID-19 pandemia, we began to engage vaccination campaigns for homeless individuals and other community members. Our first vaccination efforts were a success, and we were able to vaccinate at least 40 homeless individuals who are also participants in our harm reduction services in Humacao. We anticipated continuing vaccination efforts to our participants.

We are also providing psychological services, nursing care and case management at public housing complexes at Humacao, Fajardo and Luquillo. With La Movil (mobile unit), we can bring mental and physical health services to where people are most in need especially to those who don’t have private transportation (these towns lack public transportation services) are most affected by the past hurricanes, the earthquake and now the pandemia. As part of our new advocacy program, we participated in a vigil organized to commemorate and honor the lives of people who have died due to overdose. This event was a collaboration effort with other organizations that work with people who use drugs and groups of family members who have had an overdose related death in their families to bring attention and create awareness about the need to bring about strategies that prevent and attend to this public health problem that is costing so many preventable deaths day by day.

Among other exciting news, Intercambios Puerto Rico is finally ready to launch its first and new integrated health services clinic with a harm reduction approach focused on serving primarily who use drugs and who may be homeless in the municipality of Fajardo. In addition to health services, the clinic will provide biopsychosocial services and treatment to our community. We are extremely happy to be able to continue expanding the scopes of services we bring to our communities, so they may have opportunities to fully exercise their right to health and dignity, as well as contribute to create a more just society for all. We thank you for your continued support and invite you to share our news with family and friends who might want to help support our efforts!

Links:

• Intercambios Puerto RIco website