Offering a composite picture of someone with a drug addiction is not easy. It is not specific to gender, age, income, education, ethnicity, or geography. In this second episode on addiction and medically supervised injection rooms, we go to Melbourne Australia and speak to health care leaders there, on their experience with these programs. Again, these programs aim to a) respond to the addiction health issues of those who are dependent on injection drugs, and b) respond to the broader public health impact of addiction on a community, such as a high amount of drug overdose or the transmission of infectious disease through the sharing of infected needles.

Our guests in this episode include:

Dr Yvonne Benomo, Director of the Department of Addiction Medicine at St Vincent Hospital in Melbourne, Australia and Associate Professor at the Department of Medicine University of MelbourneDan Fleming, Group Manager of Ethics and Formation at St Vincent’s Health Australia, Fellow in the Law, Health and Justice Research Center in the University of Technology Sydney, Adjunct Lecturer and the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame, Australia

This episode was recorded on November 18, 2019

Additional resources relating to or referenced in this episode:

ITQ - Might We Celebrate A Small Step, by Daniel J. Fleming