We are a highly innovative & collective solution to many issues in community health, & our project represents an inspiring example of citizen action in a public health emergency.
Our peer-based services are beneficial to the health authority; to the community; & to the participants themselves & ensure excluded, vulnerable & marginalized people to access to health & welfare services.
Participation in our Overdose Prevention Site educates peers in; Advocacy; Community Governance; Innovative Strategies; Health Literacy; addressing health & social inequalities; facilitators & barriers for scaling up innovations; and improving health outcomes through empowerment.
100 Block Rock.”
“Each of us has been given a voice, and another way we can act is to go to demonstrations, or directly to City Hall, to speak against the destruction of the neighbourhood.”
The Downtown Eastside often receives a bad rap from fellow Vancouverites. But do we ever take time to learn its stories, to hear from those who occupy the space?
100 Block Rock is a compilation of music by artists from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The album’s Bandcamp describes the community as “constantly on the verge of extinction from a drug war, colonial genocide, gentrification and the lack of political will to create substantial change.” Yet despite this trauma, it is a vibrant, caring, and tight-knit community. This is the story of resilience told in
How safe supply of drugs is saving lives and destigmatizing substance use
Judy Darcy, B.C.’s minister of mental health and addictions, announced last March that physicians could prescribe pharmaceutical alternatives to street drugs for people who use substances. In September, Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer, passed an order allowing registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses to prescribe controlled substances in an attempt to increase access to a safer supply after a record-breaking number of drug toxicity deaths over the summer. One factor that contributed to this surge of deaths is an extremely toxic and illegally produced drug supply with high fentanyl concentrations in all illicit substances. This is in part due to border closures shutting off supply chains.