Community Models of Treatment and Care
Edward Flett Panel

This presentation focuses on the harm reduction components of the STPAN Community Wellness and Prevention (CWP Program), grounded in Ansininew teachings and community-based practice. Guided by the medicine wheel, harm reduction is presented as a culturally rooted approach that prioritizes safety, dignity, connection, and compassion while reducing the risks associated with substance use.

This presentation highlights harm-reduction-focused services within CWP including Opioid Agonist Therapy supports, detox related pathways, and aftercare, emphasizing community ;ed-delivry, relationship based care, and alignment with equality and family wellbeing.  By centering cultural values and lived experience, this approach positions harm reduction as a practical and respectful pathway to healing, wellness, and long term prevention.

Manitoba Assininew Mobile Addictions
Kirsty Muller

Indigenous communities in northern Manitoba continue to experience disproportionately high rates of substance-related harms, overdose, and barriers to accessing addiction medicine services. Geographic isolation, lack of local prescribers, limited transportation, and the ongoing impacts of colonial systems have historically forced many individuals to leave their home communities to access care, often resulting in fragmented treatment and poor continuity. The Manitoba Anisininew Mobile Addictions Network (MAMAN) is an Indigenous-led, community-directed harm reduction and addiction medicine program developed in partnership with Anisininew leadership and Four Arrows Regional Health Authority. MAMAN provides low-barrier, culturally grounded addiction care directly within Island Lake Anisininew communities, including Garden Hill, Red Sucker Lake, St. Theresa Point, and Wasagamack, while also operating an urban clinic in Winnipeg to support individuals when travel is required. This presentation will describe the development and implementation of MAMAN, including the delivery of opioid agonist therapy (OAT) such as buprenorphine-naloxone and extended-release buprenorphine (Sublocade), harm reduction supply distribution, trauma-informed clinical care, and relationship-based engagement rooted in Indigenous values and community priorities. Emphasis will be placed on the importance of providing care in community, reducing reliance on urban-based services, and addressing structural barriers that prevent equitable access to treatment. Early lessons learned, successes, and challenges of delivering addiction medicine in remote and fly-in communities will be shared, along with reflections on Indigenous governance, trust-building, and sustainability. This presentation aims to contribute practical insights for harm reduction practitioners, clinicians, and policymakers interested in supporting Indigenous-led models of care that prioritize dignity, accessibility, and community self-determination.

The Kookums of the Minopimatisiwin Sexual Wellness Lodge have decades of shared knowledge and expertise working with their communities. Together they lead the Lodge in its work. They bring thoughtfulness, caring, strength, and joy as the anchors of the Lodge. They love to laugh and talk about sex and drugs with all the relatives who come through our doors.

Join the Lodge Kôhkums to learn about how they welcome relatives into the conversation about sex and drugs, how they share their sexual health teachings, and why Kôhkums are the secret to a healthy, happy sexual health Lodge.

In this presentation we will discuss who we are, work we do, why it is effective
One Activity with Indigenous Knowledge incorporated (this is where we model)
Principles for Anti-O facilitation 
Share strategies using 1st activity as example to get the audience to use their "lens"
Question and Answer period
Handout with principles/strategies and Youth facilitation resource list.

This presentation explores the Canoe Project, an Indigenous Harm Reduction initiative aimed at addressing the unique challenges faced by Indigenous communities in Canada. By employing a community-driven approach and integrating Indigenous perspectives, the project offers culturally safe, stigma-free harm reduction services. We will discuss the training methods used, the impact on service providers' confidence and competency, and the importance of real-time feedback in shaping program effectiveness. This model serves as a framework for enhancing Indigenous harm reduction practices, reflecting Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Doing while fostering stronger community relationships and collaboration.

Use of a Managed Alcohol Program and Primary Care Providers in a Harm Reduction Approach to Support Evacuees from Northern Manitoba First Nations during the wildfire season of 2025
Ken Mackenzie, Jessica German, Troy Thalburger

Empowering Indigenous harm reduction: the Canoe project’s Cultural Safe community-driven approach
Michael Daigneault

This presentation explores the Canoe Project, an Indigenous Harm Reduction initiative aimed at addressing the unique challenges faced by Indigenous communities in Canada. By employing a community-driven approach and integrating Indigenous perspectives, the project offers culturally safe, stigma-free harm reduction services. We will discuss the training methods used, the impact on service providers' confidence and competency, and the importance of real-time feedback in shaping program effectiveness. This model serves as a framework for enhancing Indigenous harm reduction practices, reflecting Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Doing while fostering stronger community relationships and collaboration.

Help for the Helpers
Vanessa, Ginetta and Adrian
Indigenous People Who Use Drugs (PWUD) are deeply invested in caring for community members, but our contributions and our voices as Helpers are often ignored, and we are often under-supported in this helping and caring work. We are doing a community-university partnered research study to document Indigenous PWUD perspectives on what health-promoting supports they value within Helper roles. We are collecting data through four quarterly sharing circles, facilitated by Indigenous community researchers and guided by two Indigenous knowledge keepers. Four main themes came from our first couple of sessions: why Indigenous PWUD help, how we help, how we heal, and what supports we need. Participants talked about being called to help through intergenerational modelling, a gift chosen for them by Creator, and commitment to disrupting cycles of harm. They described facing systemic service and policy failures and intersecting discrimination while helping PWUD. To maintain their health and continue helping others, they emphasized the importance of ongoing self-healing that they felt could be supported by sustained cultural connection, increased access to ceremony, and community-focused infrastructure that uplifts and strengthens their community. System changes within harmful services and policies are also necessary for better support. For this session, our goal is to support each other by talking about these themes as a group and exploring together what community-led help for Indigenous PWUD Helpers looks like.

For this session, the SCS Peer Advisory Circle members will walk the audience through five specific areas where their wisdom, character, and courage have shaped the work of AHWC’s Safer Consumption Site.

Using framed posters that represent activities they have taken part in, supported, and created since the fall of 2024, the Peers will share what it was like to: Conduct a Peer-to-Peer Street Survey in downtown Winnipeg; create multiple mediums of art for the permanent SCS; formulate an understanding of substances for the SCS operations during “Drug School” meetings; identify clinical pathways within the healthcare system that help (and harm); and guide discussions around grief and loss.

This presentation hopes to shine a spotlight on much of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ work that these experts in the field have done over two years, and how their energy, presence, and passion for all things related to reducing harm and showing up for their communities brought this work to life.

Identifying the Impacts, Knowing Your Rights and Missed Opportunities for Meaningful Engagement

There are many pieces of legislation that impact our relatives who use substances. These include the Mental Health Act, the Protective Detention and Care of Intoxicated Persons Act, the Manitoba’s Human Rights Code, and others. Join Jennifer Wood, Director of Policy for Keewatinohk Inniniw Minoayawin and team to examine these pieces of legislation in an interactive workshop. Together we will discuss their impacts, what improvements we as a Harm Reduction community recommend,  and how we can advocate for real and meaningful change.

3 years of why is this so hard - untangling HEP-C care in MB 
Jennifer Van Gennip

For three years, Action Hepatitis Canada, MHRN, and allied healthcare professionals have been pushing for clear, equitable pathways to hepatitis C treatment in Manitoba — from the arena parking lot in OCN to meetings at the Manitoba Legislature, with plenty of twists in between. This session traces that journey: the incremental wins, the stubborn gaps that remain, and what it takes to move a system toward truly community-based, equitable Hep C care.

Navigating the Valley: Stories of Connection, Care, and Innovation in Swan River
Chelsea Cook & TBD
In the heart of the Swan River Valley, harm reduction is more than just a set of services—it’s kin-keeping, shared cups of coffee, and the breaking down of long-standing barriers. Over recent years, and despite mountains of stigma, the Manitoba Harm Reduction Network (MHRN) has worked to transform how health care is accessed by people who use drugs in this rural community and in doing so, has begun to address HCV and HIV treatment barriers.

This presentation moves beyond the data to share the human stories behind our most impactful initiatives. We will walk through the journey of the Health Navigator project, share the excitement of bringing innovative testing technologies to the community, and key engagement activities. Most importantly, we will talk about how all initiatives are rooted in relationships and the principles of harm reduction.

Through the lens of peer engagement and rural resilience, this session highlights how a small-town network can leverage partnerships and community to create deeply local solutions and increase the uptake of HCV and HIV treatment.

We Know what we need to do: Supporting Indigenous HIV/STBBI Doulas to do their work
Candice Neumann & Laverne Gervais

Ka Ni Kanichihk’s Indigenous HIV/STBBI Doula Program serves as a foundation for the role of Indigenous doulas in providing culturally grounded care, support, and system navigation for Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people living with or at risk of HIV in Manitoba. Community relationships, stories, connection to land, and ceremony guides the HIV doula training curriculum in alignment with kinship, harm reduction, and cultural safety practices.  Kinship is foundational to peoples’ experiences of HIV/STBBI care and connection. Community, relatives, and friends are central to peoples’ sense of belonging and well- being in Treaty 1 territory. 

Hearing stories from people with lived experience of HIV/STBBI is consistently identified as a transformational and healing experience, reinforcing the importance of storytelling within kinship networks. Community connections foster a sense of solidarity, helping to reduce stigma and isolation often associated with an HIV/STBBI diagnosis. Kinship connections shape peoples’ experiences of prevention, sexual health management, reproductive health, pregnancy, childbirth, and service navigation. The presence of doulas, who offer culturally safe, non-judgmental support, further strengthens these connections while also offering a culturally grounded, professional challenge to inherent inequities in HIV/STBBI care for Indigenous women and 2S.

Presentation Takeaways: Meaningful, authentic, and consistent relationships with community, culture, and land are essential in the care of Indigenous women and Two- Spirit people living with or at risk of HIV/STBBI. By embedding cultural practices and relational care into their work, Indigenous HIV/STBBI doulas play a critical role in fostering resilience and reinforcing spiritual and cultural connections while providing valuable and lifesaving information, education and support. If Indigenous folks are not accessing critical services and supports, those spaces are not culturally safe.

This presentation will offer insights into how organizations, non-profits and health care spaces can be a good relative to Indigenous people living with HIV by being accountable to make meaningful and significant steps to support Indigenous knowledges, technologies and expertise in our shared community spaces on Treaty 1 Territory.

Title TBD 
Kim Templeton

The greatest harm for people who use substances often comes not from the drug itself, but from fear, stigma, and misunderstanding.

Fear, stigma, and moral judgment cause injuries, isolation, and unsafe policies long before a substance ever does. Harm reduction isn’t only about supplies or services — it’s also about transforming the environments that people who use substances must survive in. One of the most powerful ways to do that is through public education grounded in science and empathy. When communities don’t understand how drugs work in the body or why people use them, fear fills the gaps. That fear becomes stigma, discrimination, unsafe policies, and harmful interactions across health, social, and justice systems. Misinformation itself becomes a form of harm.

This session reframes accessible drug science and empathy-based education as harm reduction in its own right. By helping the public understand the biology of substances, the impact of trauma, and the realities of the nervous system, we reduce moral judgment and create safer, more compassionate conditions long before anyone accesses a service. Drawing on insights from Beyond the Stigma: Science, Drugs & Empathy, this session demonstrates how shifting what people believe — and how they see others — can prevent social and structural harms that are just as dangerous as the drugs themselves.

By reframing public understanding, accessible drug science and empathy-based education become a powerful form of harm reduction

Manitoba has the highest rate of HIV in Canada and Indigenous, Black, African and Caribbean communities are overrepresented among those newly diagnosed. These outcomes are driven by structural racism and colonialism. This study explored how key institutional structures affect HIV/STBBI outcomes for Indigenous, Black, African, and Caribbean communities in Manitoba. Through knowledge gained by shared experiences and with the support of a community guiding circle, we are collaboratively developing interventions that transform policies and procedures to effectively address these inequities.

Methods

We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with service providers and community members (n =40) working in HIV care, social services, community organizations, housing, settlement services, and harm reduction programs across Manitoba. Interviews explored the relationship between racism, colonialism and HIV, healthcare access, structural conditions, substance use, and systemic inequities. Data were thematically analyzed informed by anti-colonial theorizing.

Findings

Participants consistently identified structural racism and colonialism across healthcare, housing, child welfare, justice, income assistance, and immigration systems as the foundational drivers of HIV risk. These systems shape the structural determinants that heighten HIV vulnerability. Racism in healthcare, manifesting as clinical dismissal, discriminatory labeling, and culturally unsafe service models was described as delaying HIV testing, PrEP access, and ART access, and disrupting treatment retention. Providers also highlighted how intersecting stigma related to HIV, substance use, and colonial surveillance leads many Indigenous and ACB clients to avoid hospitals or harm reduction services until crisis, contributing to delayed diagnoses and preventable transmission. Across interviews, the absence of Indigenous-led and Black-led HIV and harm reduction models was viewed as a major barrier to trust, safety, and engagement, while community-led, culturally grounded programs were seen as most effective.

Conclusions

Participants overwhelmingly identified Manitoba’s HIV epidemic as structurally produced through racism embedded in colonial policy systems. Addressing HIV inequities requires dismantling structural barriers, expanding Indigenous- and Black-led HIV and harm reduction services, and investing in culturally grounded, low-barrier models of care.

Ceremony as Harm Reduction + “be f*cking kind”
Tara Christianson & Danielle Peebles

Carrying on the vision of a friend and former colleague, the WRHA Health Outreach and Community Support (HOCS) cultural team cares for the sweat lodge at the Point Douglas Park in Winnipeg and hosts Medicine Mondays at the site or at 640 Main Street, depending on the time of year. 

Harm reduction ceremonial teachings are always in effect, with the intent to provide access to ceremony for anyone who might be seeking it. 

Anti-Indigenous racism exists within our healthcare system, something long known by Indigenous peoples and now recently evidenced by Shared Health’s race, ethnicity and Indigenous identity data report. There is a no shortage of evidence from the voices of those with lived experience pertaining to the need for more culturally based and wholistic care within health and the profound impact this has on a person’s over all well-being. 

The HOCS cultural team, situated within the larger healthcare system, works to foster relationships with community-based organizations to center the good work already being done. While recognizing our impact among the larger existing gap is a small one, we are passionate about striving to make health services more accessible and safer in a good way. Offering culturally based programming and access to ceremony we strive to create more welcoming spaces within healthcare and provide opportunities for connection, relationality, and spirituality to grow.

Join us for story sharing and laughter as we highlight how the lodge came to be, what to expect on Medicine Mondays, and discussions of how access to ceremony and culture is a harm reduction practice in itself.

Ceremony in Health Care
Danielle Hart & Heather Courchene

Despite expansion of harm reduction services across Canada, rural communities face persistent service gaps that worsen health inequities among people who use drugs. In this presentation, we will present on a mail-out service model developed by the Safe Works Access Program (SWAP) in Newfoundland and Labrador, that has succeeded in expanding harm reduction service delivery across a large geographical area in the province, and that can offer critical insights for the development of rural harm reduction service delivery across Canada.

Based in St. John's, SWAP provides comprehensive harm reduction supplies including injection kits, smoking kits, drug-testing strips, and naloxone. While their services resemble harm reduction services provided in many urban communities across Canada, they have also pioneered a mail-out system of service delivery to reach people who use drugs in geographically isolated rural communities. This adaptation addresses multiple rural-specific barriers including stigma, criminalization, surveillance, transportation limitations, and inadequate healthcare infrastructure in rural communities. 

In this presentation, we will present the SWAP mail-out service delivery model, including data from a mixed-methods study that maps harm reduction equipment distribution across rural and remote regions of the province. Additionally, we will present data from qualitative interviews with rural service users and service providers across Newfoundland and Labrador to examine implementation strengths, operational challenges, and client experiences to identify transferable learnings for other underserved rural regions.

This presentation will be useful for policy makers and service providers interested in learning about models for effective delivery of rural harm reduction services, and inform policy development and service optimization beyond urban-centric approaches. Exploring SWAP's mail-out model's successes and limitations provides evidence that can be used to scale up the delivery of community-centered harm reduction services across rural communities and provides a model for service delivery in geographically isolated communities that may be poorly served by existing harm reduction service models.

Grief Bundles: Vanessa Anakwudwabisayquay Cook + Chris Trimble

Vanessa Anakwudwabisayquay Cook will share the origin story of Grieving Bundles and some teachings of medicines and practical coping skills to help process tremendous grief. These Ancestral Teachings and Gifts support people in a way that meets them where they are at and offers tools to support collective and individual healing.

Chris Trimble will share how he has shared these bundles with communities that need them in harm reduction context when working with people living with HIV."

Imagining Safety in Selkirk, Winnipeg, and Northern Manitoba: our creation of three harm reduction videos
Daniel Thau-Eleff + 3 others (peer combo)

From 2019-2025, Moving Target Theatre and Manitoba Harm Reduction Network have partnered on a series of theatre workshops and short videos. In this session, I would like to play the 3 videos, Imagining Safety: Selkirk, Imagining Safety: Winnipeg, and Imagining Safety in Northern Manitoba. Each is about 5 minutes, and each is powerful, so a little time in between is a good thing. I would like to preface the videos with a short introduction and explanation of the project. I would like to invite one peer from each of the three locations to make some comments about the process after each video (each one would speak briefly after the video they were involved in), and then we would open it up to questions.

You Belong To Me
Heather Witherden

Heather Witherden is an award-winning storyteller who has shared her personal monologue about using Naloxone to audiences in Western Canada, as part of the show, 'Moms Moms Moms'. It's a story of healing and love made possible by harm reduction.

A short 7 minute story / monologue [play] style - about the first time this mom had to use naloxone on her son . discussion to follow

Community Supported Opioid Access Program (CSOA) and Managed Alcohol Program
Karen Murison, Brianna Sookram

Harm Reduction Programming at Main Street Project focuses on livelihood and whole person care with safe supply and alcohol consumption programming. This session will focus on why these harm reduction services were started, how they operate and how our relatives have been positively impacted.

Exploring the Benefits of Peer Focused Harm Reduction Models in Housing Settings
Leigh Elliott and Wanda Tschritter

The unregulated drug supply and the ongoing housing crisis are critical factors in overdose prevention that are beyond the control of the Housing Overdose and Peer Prevention Services (HOPPS) team or any organization to control. However, even within these contextual constraints, the HOPPS model takes up several core activities – resident engagement and education, overdose response training, safer consumption spaces and peer witnessing, connecting with health and wellness and recovery supports – which are aimed at achieving the model objective. This session will explore lessons learned from this model since its inception in 2022; including barriers to achieving its goals, and best practices that should be taken up nationwide.

In response to a Community declared Suicide State of Emergency in August 2019 and a Crystal Methamphetamine State of Emergency in September of 2022 Manto Sagihekan (Gods Lake) First Nation the Buskeh Banoon(Breaking the Chains of Substance Use Disorders) Stabilization Center was opened as a solution to support healing and wellness for community members who struggle with substance use disorders and suicidal ideation and behavior in April of 2024. Since it's opening over 200 community members have participated in this 30 day long detoxification program that blends both Inniniwuk (Cree) and Western based practices to support healing and self determination in this community. Buskeh Banoon (breaking the chains of substance use disorders) employs love, kindness, acceptance and harm reduction approaches to support community members beginning their healing journeys. By focusing on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellness of community members and their families the Center has achieved a 55% participant program completion rate with many going on to longer term substance use treatment or remaining in the community acquiring employment, training and family reunification.

The programming includes land based healing, Inniniwuk teachings and ceremonies such as the Sweatlodge and Yuwipi (Darkroom) along with Christian based pastoral care and Western evidence based approaches such as cognitive behavioral and dialectical behavioral therapeutic interventions.

The outcomes from the Buskeh Banoon Stabilization Center will be shared illustrating that taking a community driven, loving, non-judgemental approach to those struggling with crystal methamphetamine, other substance use disorders, and suicidal related thoughts and behaviors through a community driven First Nation’s approach is an effective way to address the historical and current harms that are plaguing Manitoba’s Northern First Nations communities.

Drug checking is an integral part of the harm reduction continuum and is a practical response to address rising drug poisoning and overdose in our communities. Community members can anonymously bring samples of illicit drugs to learn more about their contents. This knowledge can help support service users in making informed decisions about how they will consume their substances to increase safety. This panel provides an opportunity to present many aspects and perspectives of drug checking services. 

This panel brings together a diverse group of drug checking leaders who will share their experiences in developing and delivering drug checking services. Topics covered will include obtaining Health Canada approval, training, data management, service delivery, and community engagement. They will highlight lessons learned, gaps, and opportunities across different settings. The discussion will explore how collaboration can help build a cohesive drug checking system in Manitoba and enhance safety for people who use drugs.

Lifegivers Are Sacred: Decolonial & Feminist perspectives for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
Jennifer Meixner

This presentation centers the often-submerged perspectives of FASD such as the experiences of lifegivers by situating Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) within a decolonial and feminist framework. It challenges dominant colonial narratives surrounding disability, mothering, and responsibility, and instead highlights Indigenous and anti-colonial understandings of care, relationality, and wellbeing.

Through an inquiry into overlooked knowledge systems, the session re-imagines FASD not as an individual deficit, but as an issue shaped by historical and ongoing colonial structures. Participants will be invited to explore how decolonizing perspectives can transform approaches to prevention, support, and community care. The presentation concludes by opening space for dialogue, reflection, and collective imagining of more just and compassionate pathways forward.

Acknowledging the Real World: Sex, Alcohol, and Harm Reduction in FASD
Robyn Sugden

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is too often approached through clinical approaches that do not look at individuals with FASD beyond their diagnosis. These types of approaches undermine prevention, discourage disclosure, and reinforce shame and stigma. This workshop reframes FASD work through a harm reduction lens, centering dignity, autonomy, and the real-world contexts in which people live.

This workshop will explore the frequently overlooked overlap between alcohol use and sex, and the need to re-frame FASD prevention. By naming these intersections without judgment, practitioners can have more honest, safety-focused conversations that support people rather than shame them.

This workshop will also examine why engaging individuals with living expertise is essential; not as an add-on, but as a foundation for ethical, effective FASD practice. Their leadership challenges stigma-based narratives and helps build support systems grounded in trust, cultural humility, and realistic prevention strategies.

This session offers practical tools and discussion to help practitioners integrate harm reduction into FASD prevention, assessment, and support while promoting care that is strengths-based, relational, and trauma-informed.

In 2025, researchers from Brandon University partnered with representatives from the Manitoba Harm Reduction Network to learn about the lived experiences of people who use substances and their experiences with housing.. The study, which was funded by the Manitoba Research Alliance through a SSHRC Partnership grant, included 10 focus groups with members of each local Peer Advisory Council (and whoever else showed up)! The focus groups were conducted at MHRN peer sites across Manitoba and focused on rural and northern housing needs. 

Through focus groups with peers and peer-led initiatives, the research intends to highlight the voices of those experiencing housing challenges, and to inspire change through the lens of experiential knowledge exchange. While the research represents a snapshot of engagement, we know the voices shared are those of many years of experience and deep partnerships with MHRN. 

Through those voices we are planning to mobilize change, by highlighting commonalities across rural and northern communities, recognizing unique opportunities and challenges, and providing a common thread of discourse and awareness of housing needs in Manitoba. 

In this interactive presentation, we will share our preliminary findings and engage with session participants to explore their own housing knowledge and ideas around housing mobilization in rural and northern places.

Teen Talk is a Youth Health Education Program that provides services for youth across Manitoba from a harm reduction, prevention education perspective. Our Health Educators develop and deliver engaging and interactive workshops for youth in schools, youth-serving agencies, and communities, including a very popular Substance Use Awareness workshop for youth ages 12+. In this session, participants will learn practical strategies and evidence-based approaches for sharing substance use and safety information with young people. Participants will also discuss the Manitoba Education learning outcomes that relate to substance use, and apply a harm reduction framework to the delivery of the material. This session will include activity demonstrations and facilitation skills for working effectively with youth.