HARM REDUCTION

Running head: HARM 4

Harm

Harm Reduction

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Harm Reduction

Harm reduction is a public health move that was initiated for people more so adults with non-feasible abstinence for drugs and substance abuse. Over the years, strategies have been developed in fields such as sexual health education in an attempt to reduce the damages brought along with substance abuse. Indeed, some of those programs have successfully reduced risky alcohol use. The target audience and the context of delivering harm reduction strategies influences the interventions employed. The people and healthcare practitioners who offer care to the substance abusers should be familiar with the types of strategies directed towards the reduction of potential dangers associated with adolescent health characters. The aim of this paper is to explain the implementation of harm reduction strategies especially when dealing with substance abusers. In addition to that, this paper aims to look at an example of an either successful or unsuccessful case and contrast the approach against other approaches inclusive of treatment facilities and abstinence.

Harm reduction can be perceived as a strategy aimed towards individuals or groups that aims to lower dangers linked to other behaviors. When related to substance abuse, it backs the fact that a continued routine of drug and substance abuse is inevitable and defines the goals as reducing adverse results. It stresses on the gauging of economic, social and health outcomes. The reverse is true to the measurement of drug usage.

There is significant evidence from academic sources that strategies regarding harm reduction reduce mordibility and mortality associated with risky health behaviors to a great extent. A good example lies in the case where areas that have introduced needle exchange programs showing mean annual decreases in HIV prevalence compared to those that haven’t introduced the needle exchange programs. The most recent harm reduction strategy that has come to be so much addictive is that involving the supervised injecting facilities which have been implemented successfully in countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands.

The major question we should be asking ourselves is how these strategies can be implemented to the substance abusers.

There exist major possible strategies to substance abuse and other dangerous behavior.

-Discouraging the habit. I.e. the thought of talking to the victim and recommending that he/she quits the behavior completely.

-Encouraging the victim to reduce the frequency to which they are engaged to the behavior and

-Providing the victims with relevant and helpful information geared towards reducing the consequences of the behavior when it really happens.

One successful strategy that has proved to be effective when the intended target population has been considered and the context in which it is applied is the provision of helpful information. Studies from substance use literature have shown that the perceived risk of harm is inversely related to the level of usage… Issuing of information about the potential risk of and ways of reducing them may impact on these behaviors. We should acknowledge that programs for primary prevention of a particular habit ought to be different in focus from those that are for secondary prevention groups of victims in which the habit has matured. This is the major reason for the consideration of the target audience.

On the other hand, there have been unsuccessful harm reduction strategies. There has been an increasing literature that back up the efficiency of harm reduction strategies in both the prevention and intervention of potential risks associated with the habit. Two examples of programs that have been successfully evaluated and implemented with regard to harm reduction include the Alcohol Misuse Prevention Study (AMPS) in the US and the School Health and Alcohol Harm Reduction (SHAHRP) in Australia.

AMPS is a curriculum that includes information about the harms of alcohol abuse and ways to counter the social pressures to alcohol misuse. In a random controlled study, participants in this program possessed few alcohol problems than controls. The program has also showed reductions in the normal misuse of alcohol and its use from early stages of adolescent to the late stages.