Other services offered: HIV testing, counseling, drug treatment referrals and overdose prevention education.
Places they operate: Health clinics, mobile vans, storefronts and churches
Information: http://www.cdph.ca.gov
Source: California Public Health Department
Growing up, Katie Chamberlain walked the straight and narrow as a “dorky straight-A student.”googleoff: allgoogleon: all
The Riverside resident attended a Christian school until ninth grade. The stark reality of drugs hit home the second week of classes, when a classmate died of a heroin overdose.googleoff: allgoogleon: all
Over the years, the 27-year-old watched with sadness and despair as too many friends fell victim to illegal narcotics.googleoff: allgoogleon: all
“I was that friend who was spending Christmas Eve in the hospital with a friend,” she said. “I was the one who got called. I was the responsible one with the car who cared.”googleoff: allgoogleon: all
Today, Chamberlain is trying to create Riverside County’s first program to help drug users by giving them clean needles. County elected officials rejected a similar proposal a dozen years ago, and so far she’s meeting similar resistance.googleoff: allgoogleon: all
While attending college in the Bay Area, she met a woman who worked for a program that provided clean needles and other support to drug users.googleoff: allgoogleon: all
“It sounded awesome, thinking about the overdose reversal drugs and how life saving that can be,” she said. “I thought about all the friends who I could still have around if I knew about this when I was 15.”googleoff: allgoogleon: all
DETERMINED TO ACTgoogleoff: allgoogleon: all
Chamberlain returned to Riverside determined to act. She did research and learned about harm reduction and how drug policies can trickle down to people on the streets.googleoff: allgoogleon: all
In April 2014, she took her cause to the alleys and parking lots of downtown Riverside. She opened her car trunk and passed out clean syringes, overdose prevention kits and other resources to homeless people who showed up for a free weekly meal at a local church. The supplies, donated by Los Angeles-area support groups, ran out a year later.googleoff: allgoogleon: all
Possessing devices used to inject narcotics or controlled substances without proper certification violates state law and could lead to a person’s arrest, said Deputy Michael Vasquez, a spokesman for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.googleoff: allgoogleon: all
Chamberlain said she had a permit from the state public health department to carry syringes and other drug paraphernalia and didn’t believe she was breaking any laws.googleoff: allgoogleon: all
The sheriff’s department “understands and supports the need for the public to have access to clean needles for legitimate medical reasons,” Assistant Sheriff Lee Wagner said in an email. “Conversely, we do not support illegal drug use in any form or fashion and do not support a needle exchange program for those purposes.”googleoff: allgoogleon: all
SEEKING SUPPORTgoogleoff: allgoogleon: all
Chamberlain is setting up a nonprofit group, the Inland Empire Needle Exchange. She’s working with university students and health professionals whom she said don’t want their names made public because of the controversial subject matter.googleoff: allgoogleon: all
She aims to operate an authorized exchange program in Riverside County to be run out of a mobile van or storefront. She and other volunteers would distribute sterile syringes to intravenous-drug users to help reduce the spread of HIV, viral hepatitis and other blood-borne diseases. They could also pick up overdose prevention kits, receive HIV testing, counseling and referrals for drug treatment and other services.googleoff: allgoogleon: all
The program requires the approval of state public health officials as well as local authorities who can control zoning and other standards. Chamberlain hasn’t settled on a location but is looking at areas where people are already using drugs away from schools, parks and “gated communities.”googleoff: allgoogleon: all
The county Board of Supervisors denied a similar proposal in May 2003, arguing that it promoted illegal drug use. Gary Feldman, then the county’s public health director, declared an unofficial state of health emergency in response to a rapid rise in reported cases of hepatitis C, hepatitis B and HIV/AIDS.