Harm Reduction
Patients don’t arrive as blank slates; they arrive mid-habit, mid-crisis, mid-life. Harm reduction accepts that you cannot begin from zero — you help with as little harm as possible. That covers opioids, nicotine, Narcan, and the rest of the vices people actually have, and I’ve been making the argument since a 2011 internship at the Betty Ford Institute — in print since my 2017 STAT essay named it medicine’s new paradigm, on stages from ACEP to the Global Forum on Nicotine.
Start hereMove over Hippocrates: Harm reduction as the new paradigm for health care — STAT
In print
2020Ignoring the Sins of Our PatientsEssay — Treating the patient in front of you, whoever they turn out to be.Medscape2017Move over Hippocrates: Harm reduction as the new paradigm for health careOp-ed — The signature thesis — replace “first, do no harm” with “help with as little harm as possible.”STAT2015How our health care system makes ER doctors addiction enablersOp-ed — How the system turns ER doctors into addiction’s enablers.Chicago Tribune
From the stage
Legal & Legit? Vices in the YoungACEP Scientific Assembly · 2020
Harm Reduction: If you can’t quit, at least be saferACEP Scientific Assembly · 2020
Harm reduction in healthcareDLCC Policy Conference · 2017
Guns, Vapes, and NarcanInterdisciplinary Population Health Research Conference · 2017
Addiction is a disease, not a stigmaSummer Institute on Addictions · 2017
Panel: Harm reduction in medicineGlobal Forum on Nicotine · 2016
All addiction is not created equal: Nicotine in tobacco harms reductionSummer Institute on Addictions · 2016
Untold Stories of the ER: Real-world challenges of emergency substance abuse careSummer Institute on Addictions · 2016
The rest of her writing, by topic and outlet: All writing