Harm Reduction Team
Harm Reduction is the understanding that drug use occurs on many levels (including recreational use) and that tools and interventions can be used to prevent the negative effects of drug use. This may include preventative steps, like testing drugs with fentanyl test strips to confirm the presence of fentanyl, or retroactive measures, like using the life-saving overdose reversal medication naloxone.
Harm reduction also seeks to mitigate the social impact of drug use. This includes reversing the stigma of drug use, advocating for safe use, and promoting person-centered language. The Division of Substance Use Prevention and Harm Reduction’s Harm Reduction team promotes these principles by ensuring easy and equitable access to harm reduction supplies, advocating for the rights of people who use drugs, and leading the fight to destigmatize and decriminalize drug use.
Want to learn more? SUPHR provides education and information on harm reduction services in Philadelphia and ways to stay safer while using drugs.
Want to get involved? SUPHR gives Philadelphians access to naloxone and fentanyl test strips, and training on how to use them both.
Services Offered
The Harm Reduction team regularly engages in community outreach and events through tabling, pop-up naloxone and fentanyl test strip trainings, and street-based outreach. For our pop-up events, staff will set up a table outside at a location identified as an area with limited naloxone access or high numbers of overdoses. Staff provides Narcan and fentanyl test strips along with quick demonstrations, and other useful supplies such as condoms, masks, hand sanitizer, and more.
If you are interested in having a SUPHR table at your next community event, you can email overdose.prevention@phila.gov
Since September 2020, PDPH has had a partnership with the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education (CSFRE) to monitor the local drug supply. This drug-checking program provides information on what is in drugs in Philadelphia and allows SUPHR to provide information to the public and healthcare providers about the presence of xylazine, nitazene analogs, and other drugs and contaminants in the drug supply.
Want to learn more? Click below!
Meet the team
-
Elvis Rosado
HARM REDUCTION AND HEALTH EDUCATOR
Born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, but raised in El Barrio North Philadelphia, Elvis (he/him) is currently the SUPHR Harm Reduction and Health Educator. With 30 years in recovery, as of February 1st, 2022, he has been providing opioid education & overdose reversal trainings for the last 12 years. Elvis spent 25 years with Prevention Point Philadelphia (PPP) in a multitude of roles, including 9 years as a volunteer and 15 years as an employee providing harm reduction and outreach services to engage and educate sex workers and other people with substance use disorders.
Prior to his position at PPP, Elvis worked as an addiction therapist at Girard Medical Center and Parkside Recovery’s methadone clinics, and as an adolescent counselor at Public Health Management Corporation’s (PHMC) The Bridge. Elvis’s previous work was largely centered around HIV. At the height of the HIV epidemic, he worked as an HIV test phlebotomist and rapid swab tester at Drexel’s W.A.T.S. (Women’s Anonymous Test Site) program and at PCHA’s Mazzoni Clinic.
Elvis has been deeply involved in the Latino community. He is an alumnus of the Latino Partnership Leadership Institute, where individuals are provided with tools to access community needs and develop solutions to address them. He is also involved in the Latino Teach program, coordinated by PPP and Philadelphia Fight. Teaching night classes to individuals that speak limited English and are HIV Positive, Elvis covers a variety of topics including HIV 101, STI prevention and treatment, Hepatitis A, B, and C transmission and treatment, and interactions between HIV medications and street drugs. Elvis cultivated these education skills during his work as a prevention specialist in the Philadelphia School System, where he taught concepts like violence prevention, teen dating violence, job interview etiquette, and drug and alcohol use prevention.
In all, he has spent the larger portion of his life (about 30 years) working with the community to help individuals make safer life choices.