When Nothing Changes Nothing Changes (Part 2)

This is the second of a two part interview with Irene Garnett.

Irene Garnett is a Harm Reduction Research Program Administrator at the University of Arizona and is the Grants and Communications Coordinator at Cochise Harm Reduction, a grassroots SSP and community outreach organization on the US/Mexico Border, based in Bisbee, AZ. She has been part of the Drug Policy Research and Advocacy Board since 2021, contributing as a co-investigator and co-author on multiple research projects and articles related to accessing harm reduction care and medication assisted treatment (MAT). Irene is someone who is passionate about advocating alongside justice-involved individuals and other marginalized communities. She possesses years of project management, program development, grant writing/grant reporting, and accounting experience.

Caty Simon has spent 20 years in the low-income rights, psychiatric survivors’ rights, sex workers’ rights, and drug users union movements. She is a leadership team member of and a sex worker liaison for National Survivors Union (NSU), the United States national drug users union. Simon is also a founding co-organizer and co-executive director of Whose Corner Is It Anyway, a Western MA harm reduction, mutual aid, and organizing group by and for low-income, street, and survival sex workers who use opioids and/or stimulants and/or experience housing insecurity. She is the Director of Narrative Development at NC Survivors Union, the flagship affiliate group of NSU, leading Narcofeminism Storyshare, a project reducing stigma against people who use drugs through autobiographical story development and stakeholder training. From 2013 to 2020, Simon was co-editor of Tits and Sass (⁠titsandsass.com⁠), a seminal media outlet by and for sex workers which was featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Jezebel, Gawker, and the New Inquiry, to name a few. She is first author of a commentary in the International Journal of Drug Policy on union members’ experiences as drug user organizers doing community driven research (CDR) and an editorial in a health justice and overdose crisis special issue of the American Journal of Public Health, “The methadone manifesto: treatment experiences and policy recommendations from methadone patient activists.” She has extensive experience as a research and intervention consultant representing people with living experience of drug use and drug treatment, and has worked with the Yale Program of Addiction Medicine, the COVID-19 and Substance Use Data Collaborative, the Baystate Hospital Emergency Department,  the National Drug Early Warning System, JBS International, the University of Kentucky’s Department of Behavioral Science, and the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, among others. Simon recently served on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s harm reduction steering committee, defining harm reduction and its principles, precepts, and metrics for the federal agency.

ATTENTION:

For folks with lived experience who are interested in the research project outlined on the show, below is information about how to participate:

Drs Paul Joudrey and David Frank are preparing a project aiming to bring shared decision making to methadone clinics. Shared decision making aims to make patients equal partners in medical decision making and it has been missing from methadone treatment. They will be hosting a 1 hour focus group to get feedback from people with lived and living experience (PWLLE) on their project. They are looking to see if their approach matches PWLLE priorities. No prior research experience needed. Participants will be compensated for their participation.

The date for t