WECOSS Action Plan Guiding Recommendation [FIVE]:  Increase access to a variety of harm reduction options, such as non- abstinence based programs that accept clients using medication assisted therapies, safer drug use equipment, and mobile outreach activities, for people who use opioids and those affected by people who use opioids.

Goal: To engage and assess community and key stakeholders’ perceptions, concerns, and acceptability of supervised injection services (SISs) in Windsor-Essex.

Summary of Activities: The Supervised Injection Services Community Consultations Report was prepared and results presented to the Board of Health on September 19, 2019. The Board of Health passed a resolution to move forward with a SIS (federal requirement) and Consumption and Treatment Services (CTS) (provincial requirement) applications for a SIS led by WECHU. The full consultation report is posted on the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit’s website.

Measurable Outputs

• 61% of community survey respondents said an SIS would be helpful to Windsor and Essex County.
• 2520 surveys completed by the general public
• 99 in-person interviews or surveys completed with People Who Inject Drugs
• 5 in person focus groups conducted
• 20 key informant interviews with community stakeholders

Next Steps: This work includes providing more education to the community about substance use disorders and harm reduction approaches, along with a formalized community consultation process to determine a potential location for an SIS/CTS. A Program Coordinator has been hired to lead this consultation process.

WECOSS Action Plan Guiding Recommendation [FIVE]:Increase access to a variety of harm reduction options, such as non-abstinence based programs that accept clients using opioid substitution therapies, safer drug use equipment, and mobile outreach activities, for people who use opioids and those affected by people who use opioids.

Goal: To support a local system of Needle Syringe Programs (NSP) to improve the lives of people who use drugs by improved access to health and social services, and harm reduction supplies.

Summary of Activities: New NSP sites added, along with additional routes for the mobile outreach van, allowed for wider distribution of harm reduction materials in Windsor and Essex County. Ongoing distribution of harm reduction equipment across Windsor and Essex County and statistics collected will ensure local programs are further developed and implemented based on reliable data.

Measurable Outputs:

• 708,697 Total Needles Distributed in 2019
• 369,761 Total Needles Returned in 2019
• 3,476,752 Total harm reduction supplies/ kits distributed in WEC in 2019

WECOSS Action Plan Guiding Recommendation [FIVE]: Increase access to a variety of harm reduction options, such as non- abstinence based programs that accept clients using opioid substitution therapies, safer drug use equipment, and mobile outreach activities, for people who use opioids and those affected by people who use opioids.

Goal: To reduce to the number of improperly discarded syringes and sharps in neighborhoods across Windsor and Essex County, by providing education and sharp disposal bins.

Summary of Activities: A systematized data collection process for needles collected from these bins has been created to increase understanding of the local picture and impact of this initiative. Ongoing public education on how to properly dispose of a sharp if found in the community has also been a key activity with “I Found a Needle” education posters being disseminated.  These posters were modified for young people and all posters translated to Arabic and French.

Measurable Outputs:

• 101,432 needles collected from all community needle disposal bins in 2019
• 704 reports were made to the City of Windsor’s 311 service related to needles found in the community (June 2018 to Feb 4, 2020).
• 2 educational posters for young people and adults on proper needle disposal (one for both City and County)
• 2 language translations (Arabic and French)  for all educational posters

WECOSS Action Plan Guiding Recommendation [FIVE]: Increase access to a variety of harm reduction options, such as non- abstinence based programs that accept clients using opioid substitution therapies, safer drug use equipment, and mobile outreach activities, for people who use opioids and those affected by people who use opioids.

Goal: To recruit organizations to the Ontario Naloxone Program (ONP) and train organizational champions on how to order and dispense naloxone for clients. Promoting points of access for naloxone and increasing community literacy around how to respond to an overdose are secondary goals of this project.

Summary of Activities: The Ontario Naloxone Program (ONP) is offered locally through the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit, which conducts outreach to community organizations and acts as a hub for partners’ ordering and reporting of kits. A paid radio campaign was launched to correspond with disproportionately high rates of overdose over a short period in 2019. The campaign focused on how to respond to an opioid overdose and where to access a naloxone kit.

Measurable Outputs:

• 18 Ontario Naloxone Program sites trained
• 6109 Naloxone kits or refills distributed in Windsor and Essex County through the Ontario Naloxone Program in 2019.
• Two (2) social media campaign promoting naloxone
  • 20724 Facebook reach (total number of unique accounts who saw this content)
  • 55584 Facebook reach (total number of unique accounts who saw this content https://www.wecoss.ca/annual-report2019/treatment-and-recovery