IHRA’S 21^st INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE:

APRIL 25-29 LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND

‘Harm Reduction – the Next Generation’

The International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), the Conference Consortium and Liverpool John Moores University are pleased to invite you to Harm Reduction 2010: IHRA’s 21^st International Conference which will take place in Liverpool, England, the city which hosted the first event back in April 1990.

The Conference theme for 2010 is: ‘Harm Reduction: The Next Generation’. There are now two and a half decades of harm reduction experience and evidence shows the feasibility and effectiveness of harm reduction in a wide variety of social and cultural settings but:

What is needed as we move through to the third decade of harm reduction?

How adequate are the models of harm reduction that have been developed?

Is the ‘comprehensive package’ of harm reduction for HIV sustainable in low and middle income countries?

How can we expand harm reduction to cater for all psychoactive drugs?

When we ‘scale up’ harm reduction, should we just replicate and expand pilots and projects of work to integrate harm reduction into health systems?

How does harm reduction intersect with, and change, drug control systems?

What new opportunities are there for harm reduction in terms of human rights, security, development and other sectors?

This theme will be reflected throughout the conference programme, and has been carefully chosen to embody: Young People, New Populations, New Interventions and New Challenges and abstracts relating to the conference theme are especially welcome.

In essence, IHRA plans to use Harm Reduction 2010 as an opportunity to look back over the last two decades and more and reflect on the successes and challenges that we have faced in order to move forward.

We hope you will join us in April 2010 in Liverpool, a city of proud history of both public health and harm reduction. It was the first city in the world to appoint a Medical Officer of Health in 1847 and, in the 1980s, developed the ‘Mersey Harm Reduction Model’ for reducing drug related harms.