SMART Health
SMART Health is an education/outreach structure we have developed to engage directly with our wider East Harlem community and build a collective health consciousness. Through two weekly outreach activities (Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:00am at the East Harlem Neighborhood Health Action Center and surrounding neighborhood), SMART outreach workers provide HIV information/resources, PPE, and up-to-date health information, promoting harm reduction practices and encouraging participation in SMART’s programs. Each of our SMART Health outreach teams includes both SMART staff members and SMART participant stipend workers, among whom are Spanish and Mandarin/Cantonese speakers.
Our Monday outreach event (with both tabling and street outreach activities) is devoted to harm reduction, offering resources and harm reduction supplies (safe injecting kits, safe sniffing kits, Narcan, condoms) in hopes of reducing overdose deaths and incidences of intravenous HIV infection among community residents who use drugs. We have greatly benefited from our partnerships with OnPoint and Mount Sinai’s REACH Clinic, both of whom share harm reduction supplies with us, as well as offering guidance and support.
At our Wednesday outreach event, the SMART outreach team shares health kits, promotes harm reduction and safer sex practices, shares IPV resources, and encourages participation in SMART’s programs. The health kits contain our SMART Resource card (highlighting emergency service numbers), and personal health items such as masks, condoms, tissues, band aids, lip balm, and hand sanitizer. Our distribution (for both outreach teams) also includes water, juice, and snack bags of healthy, easily chewable snacks. Additionally, we have realized a need for providing hygiene kits (male and female) to community members who use drugs and/or may be unhoused, containing such items as toothbrushes, combs, shampoo, body wipes, lotion, condoms, nail clippers, deodorant, lip balm, and, most notably, period products. And, during the winter months, we are distributing “warm kits” with gloves, hats, socks, scarves, and mylar blankets.
Please visit our Harm Reduction and PHC Ambassadors pages for more information about SMART’s outreach efforts.
