Natasha Touesnard & Gillian Kolla

Natasha is the executive director of the Canadian Association of People Who Use Drugs (CAPUD). Prior to this, she was the full-time site coordinator at the Open Door Clinic, a family practice and opioid agonist treatment centre. She was also among several current or former drug users who formed the first drug-user group in Atlantic Canada: the Halifax Area Network of Drug Using People (HANDUP). Natasha was a member of the Canadian to the United Nations’ Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna, Austria in 2019.

 

Gillian is a public health researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, University of Victoria. She is also a member of the coordinating committee for the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society, which opened Ontario’s first overdose prevention site in a Toronto park in 2017 as part of a community-led response to overdose deaths.

How Splitting and Sharing Got the OK at Canada’s Overdose Prevention and Supervised Consumption Sites

Never underestimate the power and dedication of a group of fearless and motivated harm reductionists. Early in the process of…

September 29, 2021