11 groups get grants to launch harm-reduction projects that focus on racial equity and underserved communities

Kentucky Health News

The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky announced the 11 recipients of its Shaping a Healthy and Inclusive Future Together grants to support ongoing harm reduction and racial equity work.

The program is in partnership with Vital Strategies and the Kentucky Opioid Response Effort. 

“In Kentucky, communities of color have been disproportionately affected by overdose, and often don’t have adequate access to life-saving harm reduction services,” Hunter Harrison, program manager for the Kentucky Overdose Prevention Program at Vital Strategies, said in a news release. “With these grants, we want to tackle these disparities by empowering communities that have been most affected. These grants are about making sure everyone has a chance to be part of the solution and creating a more inclusive and connected approach to harm reduction.”

Along with resources like naloxone and fentanyl testing strips, harm reduction includes helping people to live longer and more safely, making sure they have access to health care and social support and connecting people to other resources such as food security and workforce education.

Grants aim to meet a need

According to the 2023 Kentucky Drug Overdose Fatality Report, overdose deaths of Black Kentuckians rose in 2023, from 259 in 2022 to 264 in 2023, despite the overall decline of fatal overdoses.

Further, the report found that the rate of drug overdose deaths among Black Kentuckians in 2023 was 68.3 per 100,000, which was 52% greater than the white rate of 45 per 100,000.

In response, the foundation and its partners created the SHIFT grant program to reduce overdoses among BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) and underserved communities. Together, the grant recipients will launch $500,000 in projects.

“This project is about more than providing funding, it’s about fostering partnerships and supporting innovative, community-driven approaches to harm reduction,” Ben Chandler, president and CEO of the foundation, said in the release. “By working alongside organizations that are deeply rooted in the communities they serve, we can create safer, healthier environments where everyone has access to the support they need to thrive.”

The grant recipients, listed below, will receive either $25,000 or $50,000.

• Black Soil Charitable Fund: The Lexington-based organization will use its grant to add Narcan boxes and educational materials to several Black Soil Farmacy Markets while also improving access to nutritious foods for Kentuckians in recovery and utilizing farming as a source for recovery capital.
• Change Today, Change Tomorrow: The Louisville organization will use its grant to distribute harm reduction supplies across West Louisville through their ongoing food-access work. They will also be training peer educators in harm reduction, substance use safety and the many pathways to recovery.
• Granny’s Birth Initiative: This Louisville organization that provides perinatal support primarily to Black Kentuckians will use its grant to provide additional harm reduction education to doula techs to enhance the support they give to clients with substance use disorder.
• Greater Louisville Recovery Project: The Louisville center will use its funds to support low-barrier, peer-led programming to engage Black Louisvillians and local business owners in the normalization of harm reduction strategies.
• Hotel Inc.: The Bowling Green organization will work with leaders in homeless encampments to expand access to harm reduction resources for people who use drugs. It will also work to train other providers in these strategies across western Kentucky.
• Louisville Pride Foundation: The Louisville-based organization will use its funds to provide training for LGBTQ community health workers to disseminate harm-reduction information and supplies across the state, and it will train local health care providers on culturally competent care for members of the LGBTQ community who use drugs.
• Project Ricochet: The Lexington-based organization will use its grant to develop a coalition of BIPOC community members with lived experience, developing an advocacy plan for issues that affect people in recovery, and hosting a ‘Black Family Conference’ that will provide attendees with education and training around harm reduction.
• Queer Kentucky: The statewide organization will use its funds to develop a coalition of businesses that will provide free harm-reduction supplies in discreet locations, and the creation of stigma-reducing campaigns.
• Recovery Café Lexington: The community center in Lexington for people in recovery will use the funds to support its minority outreach specialist position. This role will increase the organization’s capacity to provide harm reduction supplies, housing support, vocational training scholarships, transportation support and other resources to BIPOC residents who are at risk of overdose or seeking recovery support.
• Somali Community of Louisville: The organization that works with immigrants and refugees in Louisville will use this grant to expand its naloxone trainings and access for members of the Somali community as well as efforts to decrease the stigma in the community around mental health services, harm reduction and recovery.
• St. John Center: The Louisville organization will use the funds to expand its harm reduction activities within its Permanent Supportive Housing program, which focuses on individuals who use drugs, who are formerly homeless and struggle to maintain housing.