Ascend Harm Reduction

03/26/2025

🥳🥳 Date saved! We can't wait for this one!

SAVE THE DATE 🔥😈

You aren't going to want to miss this 2-night, CAMPING EXPERIENCE ⛺️🕥

With over 20+ LOCAL and BIG 👀 artists, this limited capacity weekend, is one we won't forget.

PK SOUND in Full Effect 🔊

Lasers, 3D Mappjng and extra production coming at you.

Full Lineup and Tickets coming soon 👀 Follow to stay updated 😈

02/26/2025

Reminder to all volunteers: Our open-to-all members meeting is happening tomorrow night from 7-9pm.
Join us in person or online - All details can be found in the volunteer portal!
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01/23/2025

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“As we enter into 2025, it’s crucial not to let the ongoing drug poisoning crisis get lost amid an overwhelming number of critical issues facing our city and province. Despite a decline in drug poisoning deaths in Alberta in 2024, they remain unacceptably high. Since 2016, Edmonton has lost nearly four thousand of our neighbours, friends, and family members to toxic drugs and continues to bear the highest rate of drug poisoning fatalities in Alberta.

This apparent reprieve offers a critical opportunity to double down on an evidence-driven, public health response. Our recent survey of 499 people who used illegal drugs in Edmonton’s inner city — the largest such study in Alberta — provides critical insights on the support and policies still needed. It is imperative that we use this data to both respond to the humanitarian crisis on our streets and further reduce drug-poisoning deaths.

In our survey, 80 per cent of participants were unhoused, and over half identified housing as their most pressing unmet need. Houselessness was cited as the primary reason for public drug use. Permanent supportive housing that integrates harm-reduction services not only addresses houselessness but also provides stability, autonomy, and reduces health-care system burden. Expanding these services would be a lifesaving step toward reducing encampments on city streets and preventing drug deaths, 36 per cent of which have happened in public in Edmonton since 2023.

With 39 per cent of survey participants experiencing an overdose in the past six months, the need for more supervised consumption services (SCS) remains urgent. Research shows that SCS save lives, reduce harm, and provide pathways to treatment without increasing drug use or crime in surrounding areas. Yet, since 2020, Edmonton’s SCS capacity has been reduced and efforts to open new sites have been stymied.

A simple way to rapidly expand access to SCS in the short term would be for the province to allow them to accommodate smoking as a route of drug use. Smoking was the most common way (94 per cent) that people in our survey reported using drugs. Making this change would help save additional lives and in the process, reduce visible drug use in public spaces.

It’s also time to prioritize effective support for people who use methamphetamine. Methamphetamine was the most frequently consumed substance amongst survey participants, yet specialized treatment options remain limited. With methamphetamine present in 69 per cent of substance-related deaths in Edmonton in 2023, we need to think beyond opioids and ensure that the provincial approach to substance-use care is tailored to the specific needs of people who use methamphetamine.

Finally, hundreds of conversations with research participants revealed the profound impact of complicated grief and trauma in the community. An overwhelming 88 per cent had recently witnessed an overdose and 75 per cent had lost someone they cared about to a fatal drug poisoning. Adding to this emotional burden, serious mental health and neurological conditions are common, but many participants were reluctant to seek medical care, citing fear of judgment or past experiences of discrimination due to substance use. Expansion of specialized mental-health programs, offering more 24-hour walk-in counselling, creating spaces for collective healing and grieving, and ensuring culturally safe and trauma-informed care are all essential to addressing these unmet care needs.

Every drug death is preventable and we must aim for nothing less than zero deaths. This year, we encourage Edmontonians and Albertans to advocate for, and support evidence-based policies. We must also reject the political rhetoric and stigma that falsely divides harm reduction and treatment. Both are essential and complementary approaches, and in combination with safe and permanent housing options, they will save many more lives.

Campion Cottrell-McDermott is a research co-ordinator with the Inner City Health and Wellness Program.

Ginetta Salvalaggio is a professor with the University of Alberta’s Department of Family Medicine.

Bethany Piggott is a research assistant with the Inner City Health and Wellness Program.

Elaine Hyshka is an associate professor in the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health.

Heather Morris is an assistant professor in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Nursing.

01/19/2025

Our friends are doing some great work reclaiming their voices! Check out our collab post and give them a follow! Harming in the name of helping is harm 🔥🤜🤛🔥
Doing harm with good intention, is still harm. We’re going to talk about it.
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12/21/2024

Some volunteers have seen their cards show up! Amazing turn around time following a strike, thank you Canada Post workers!

12/19/2024

Here we go!! 🤩

Timeslots for Friday!!!

Get there early so you arent stuck in the massive line up!!

12/15/2024

If you work with youth, this new series of six postcards from CATIE and Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR) is a great way to provide shame-free, s*x-positive and affirming s*xual health information. Order now and empower youth to learn about PrEP, HIV treatment, harm reduction, safer s*x, l**e and testing for HIV and STIs: https://www.catie.ca/s*xfluent-postcards

12/13/2024

This is very sad news for Edmonton.

Boyle Street's proposed overdose prevention site in southeast Edmonton struck down

Agency dropping application after repeated attempts to obtain a development permit

Mrinali Anchan · CBC News · Posted: Dec 11, 2024 7:40 PM MST | Last Updated: December 11

https://www.bing.com/search?q=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/boyle-street-s-proposed-overdose-prevention-site-in-southeast-edmonton-struck-down-1.7408253&count=1

12/13/2024

Wow! What a party last night! Thanks to all volunteers and guests for coming out to celebrate at the Ascend Volunteer Appreciation Holiday Party! Thank you to our caterers for the feast, live djs for keeping us vibing and our social coordinator for making it all happen!
Pictures to come.

12/03/2024

A woman in Saskatoon was recently admitted to hospital with severe complications related to HIV. She was diagnosed with a rare and life-threatening viral infection, called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, that was eating away at her brain’s white matter.

The patient was homeless and struggling with substance use. She was also experiencing active psychosis and paralysis on the left side of her body. Despite her complex medical condition, she was discharged in the middle of the night to a shelter with no open beds. She ended up wandering the streets with no shoes and no jacket in the extreme cold.

It was an outreach team run by Sanctum Care Group – the HIV-AIDS Response Team (HART) – that came to her aid. (HART, which is called into hospitals to support patients, was creating a discharge plan for the patient at the initial hospital but were not told of her release.)

Only through Sanctum’s connections to infectious disease physicians in the city were they able to get the woman readmitted to another hospital. She was provided treatment, including antiretroviral therapy, but her condition continued to deteriorate. HART tracked down her family so that they could say goodbye.

“She died knowing someone cared about her, wasn’t going to leave her alone, paralyzed and confused to fend for herself. She died with dignity,” said Katelyn Roberts, Sanctum co-founder and executive director, who shared the patient’s story. The woman passed away in hospital last week.

Care providers and medical experts in the province have long raised the alarm about growing rates of HIV, but they have been unable to curtail the disease’s spread. Saskatchewan has the highest diagnosis rate of any province or territory at 19.4 new infections per 100,000 people – more than three times the national average in 2023.

Compounding challenges of mental health, substance use, racism, violence, poverty and housing affordability are increasing the complexity of care, transmission rates, co-morbidities, co-infections and instances of early death among people with HIV, according to a report released this week by the Saskatchewan Infectious Disease Care Network.

Canada is behind many other developed nations in addressing HIV rates despite significant advancements to prevent, test and treat the virus. The latest data from the Public Health Agency of Canada, released on Friday, shows 2,434 new cases of HIV were diagnosed in 2023, an increase of 35 per cent from the year prior.

The issue has grown worse with the “post-pandemic explosion” of drug use and homelessness, said Satchan Takaya, division head for infectious diseases at the University of Saskatchewan. “With the numbers escalating exponentially, we can’t keep up,” she said. “We just don’t have the capacity in the health system.”

She sees the approaching World AIDS Day, which has taken place annually on Dec. 1 since 1988, as a reminder that there is still much work to do. Too many people are unaware that this crisis is on their doorstep, she said, affecting the most vulnerable in their communities. Indigenous people in Saskatchewan are disproportionately affected.

HIV care programs in Saskatoon, the province’s largest city, have been disconnected and – through no fault of their own – fight one another to obtain funding from the same pool of money, Dr. Takaya said.

Sanctum, which opened in 2015 as a HIV hospice and transitional care home, has since expanded to support high-risk individuals through a prenatal home called Sanctum 1.5 for women who are at risk of having their infant apprehended at birth. It also has a prenatal outreach team and transitional housing for graduates of Sanctum 1.5.

Getting individuals to take HIV medications routinely is a consistent challenge because of the stresses of their everyday life, Ms. Roberts said. But Sanctum programs, which provide stability for this population, have proven successful in reducing homelessness and substance use among its clients, in addition to treating HIV. But their waitlists continue to grow.

The report released this week followed a two-year review of Saskatoon’s HIV care services and identified a path forward for change. It outlines the need for greater investments to support the expansion of HIV programs; better data-sharing and co-ordination between program providers; training to advance culturally competent and trauma-informed care; and audits to determine adequate funding based on patient load and the complexity.

The creation of a provincial HIV program and hiring of an HIV care co-ordinator, who would liaise across care sites and manage referrals, are among the 11 recommendations. The evaluation is clear, Dr. Takaya said, adding that now action needs to follow.

11/28/2024

A big THANK YOU to our volunteers who attended tonight's s*xual health education session! If you're a volunteer and missed it - don't fret! We are offering this module again in 2025!
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Ascend has made a commitment to invest in our volunteers through education, training and experiences - to in turn provide the community we support with more knowledge and resources to shape better choices.

11/23/2024

Heads up Ascend Volunteers! Our volunteer appreciation holiday party invitation has gone out by email and is posted in the volunteer portal!

We cannot wait to celebrate the season and all our successes with the people who make everything possible!

Please RSVP by December 1st using the Google form link provided.

09/30/2024

This National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we at Ascend Harm Reduction honours the resilience of Indigenous people and acknowledges the enduring impacts of colonial practices.

We believe that all people should be met where they are at, and support should always be provided through a trauma-focused lens.

Indigenous people face ongoing barriers, including limited access to basic social services like stable housing, income support, and clean water. There’s a need for more opportunities to learn and honor Indigenous traditions, languages, and history, and to ensure active engagement within the broader community.

We acknowledge that we operate on the traditional territories of the Treaty 7 Nations, including the Blackfoot Confederacy comprising the Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani Nations, as well as the Tsuut’ina Nation and the Stoney Nakoda Nations of Bearspaw, Chiniki, and Wesley. This land is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta Region 3. As we work towards harm reduction and reconciliation, we remain committed to honoring the history, culture, and ongoing contributions of Indigenous peoples to this land.

Educate yourself on the history and ongoing impacts of colonialism, listen to the stories of survivors, and advocate for improved access to harm reduction services for Indigenous peoples.