“Join the Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (PS MHTTC) for a special, no-cost, full-day symposium to uplift the origins, approaches, and practices of harm reduction in mental health work. Our region is proud to be a national incubator of this approach: the National Harm Reduction Coalition started in Oakland, CA over 25 years ago. Throughout our region, providers and systems leaders are partnering with people with lived experience to reimagine how we take care of each other (sometimes through systems, sometimes despite systems, and sometimes within systems).

While harm reduction has roots in substance abuse, it is also a vital mental health approach. We are holding this symposium to explore how the tenets of harm reduction and healing justice can inform and transform the way we engage in mental health care.

We come together to explore these questions:

• By centering the lived and living experience of people and communities, how might community-driven public health strategies help us care for our clients and patients differently?

• How might we as service providers listen and learn from communities who are already taking care of each other, saving each other’s lives in ways that might be uncomfortable but necessary?

Our symposium captures innovative approaches to harm reduction with presenters from across the region who work within diverse settings and populations. We also honor voices of lived experience by creating rich learning opportunities throughout the day that explore how our mental health policies, programs, and practices can minimize stigma and discrimination and maximize respect, health, and self-direction.”