A healthcare and treatment system that ends punitive and coercive approaches that disproportionately harm Black people and instead prioritizes culturally appropriate services that center Black drug users’ agency, autonomy, and safety.
A funding, policy, and accountability landscape that truly values and listens to Black people impacted by addiction and invests in local Black organizations and networks, ensuring they have the autonomy and capacity to respond to the needs of their communities.
Current Priorities: Priority 1 - Change the Narrative
Objective 1: Increase Urgency: Decision-makers and the general public will understand the severity of the current overdose crisis for Black people in St. Louis.
Objective 2: Reduce Stigma: Everyone will understand drug use as a complex phenomenon that is often a result of individual and community trauma.
Objective 3: Increase Hope: Everyone will be aware that wellness is possible with a wide variety of paths to support, community, and recovery for people who use drugs.
Priority 2 - Promote Safe Use
Objective 1: Harm Reduction Education: Black people and communities will understand how to reduce the harms of drug use and prevent overdose.
Objective 2: Increase Access to Harm Reduction Supplies: Black people and communities will have standard and equitably distributed access to safe use supplies (naloxone, sterile needles, test kits, etc.)
Priority 3 - Increase Service Options
Objective 1: Increase Access to the existing SUD system of care: Black people and communities will have equal, responsive, and timely access to the continuum of regional SUD treatment and service options.
Objective 2: Expand the continuum of care for Black PWUD: Black people and communities impacted by drug use will have access to new models of wrap-around and healing support from innovative models & pilot programs.
Objective 3: Promote relationship-based interventions: Black people and communities have options to access positive social support from those who have a similar cultural context and shared life experiences.
