Clinic vending machine ‘stepping stone’ to harm reduction By: Malak Abas Posted: 6:10 PM CDT Tuesday, Mar. 12, 2024

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Naloxone kits, condoms and even sage are now a touchscreen away at Access NorWest.

Starting Wednesday, a vending machine in the lobby of the NorWest Co-op Community Health clinic will provide free harm reduction tools, such as clean needles and HIV tests, as well as cultural and seasonal needs (smudge kits and socks).

While people will have to set up an account (using a code number or avatar) to access the machine, it will be anonymous, officials said.

It will, however, be used to collect data as part of a three-year, countrywide research initiative based at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto to better inform what harm reduction tools people most need.

The machine will also dispense information based on what item is selected. For example, if someone picks a kit of needles, it will display nearby substance use disorder resources.

Placing the machine in the primary care clinic at 785 Keewatin St. provides a pathway to next steps for people picking up HIV or STI tests, NorWest primary care director Shannon Milks said.

“The hope is to build that relationship and trust with our community to be able to come and access other services that we have… If that next step for them is meeting with one of the (NorWest) providers or nurses to get other types of testing or ask other questions, then they learn about the different services that we have,” she said Tuesday.

“It’s a bit of a stepping stone.”

NorWest Co-op Community Health has 10 centres across the province, providing primary care, counselling and child care services. In 2023, the non-profit handed out four times more harm reduction supplies than the year prior, Milks said.

As drug toxicity continues to rise in Winnipeg, the need for multiple channels to access harm reduction tools has grown, advocates say.

An August 2023 survey of illicit drug users by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority found a quarter of respondents said they had shared needles or other injecting equipment.

Only half of those said they had been tested for sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections in the past six months.

“(With the vending machine), there’s no human interaction, they can just get what they need and it comes in discreet packaging.”–Danos Tsouras

NorWest community facilitator Dano Tsouras said more traditional styles of harm reduction supply dispersal, such as hand-offs via brick-and-mortar organizations or mobile outreach, sometimes require people to self-identify as drug users, which can be a barrier.

“(With the vending machine), there’s no human interaction, they can just get what they need and it comes in discreet packaging,” he said.

“We’re hoping to see that remove that barrier where people might not get the harm reduction supplies they need because of the unknown or shame that they might feel talking to people about it.”

Last year, Keewatinohk Inniniw Minoayawin Inc. said it would be installing a similar dispensing machine in Winnipeg that scanned the user’s hand print to unlock supplies.

Community advocate Mitch Bourbonniere said low-barrier, self-serve tech may become a larger part of Manitoba’s harm reduction efforts in the future.

“One way to expand a program like this… I would like to see every pharmacy in the city have a drug-testing machine, where people can go in and test their drugs before they use them. That, to me, is harm reduction,” he said.

“It has all the same benefits of the vending machine as well, where we’re making a statement: we’re telling people we care about them, we don’t want them to die.”

“If there was safe supply added to that vending machine, then I’d be doing cartwheels.”–Arlene Last-Kolb

Milks said she’d like to see the data collected by the vending machine be used to inform expansion of similar projects.

“We want to contribute to that data to show the need so that other sites can follow along, and then it (could) potentially become more regionally funded as a model of care.”

Moms Stop the Harm lead Arlene Last-Kolb said while any extra harm reduction is a positive, she wants to see the introduction of safer supply — or prescribing narcotics to drug use to circumvent toxic street substances — take precedent.

“If there was safe supply added to that vending machine, then I’d be doing cartwheels,” she said.

Last-Kolb warned the piecemeal efforts she’s seeing from local organizations aren’t close to meeting the needs her group is witnessing.

“The fact that we have to fight for a little bit, a vending machine to save somebody from getting HIV, that would cost (the province) millions of dollars to take care of them?” she said.

“What I’m saying to everybody is, we deserve much, much more. Much, much better.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

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