Welcome to a tech policy podcast. I'm Ash Kazarin.

On the show, we're going to talk about harm reduction and the World Health Organization.

Joining me, I have Chelsea Boyd, Research Associate in the Harm Reduction Team at Australia Institute,

and Carrie Wade, Director of Harm Reduction Policy

at our student institute.

Ladies, thank you for coming.

Thanks for having us.

So there's a lot to unpack.

And for our listeners who don't know anything about harm reduction, I'm going to link to

our previous episode with Carrie.

Chelsea, welcome to the show for the first time.

We're going to have you back many, many times, I hope.

But just like a slight refresher, what is harm reduction policy?

What do we say when we use this word?

Because it sounds pretty good, right?

It sure does, especially to me.

So harm reduction is the idea that there are a safer way to do things that we know are pretty dangerous for us.

It really starts it out with opioids and HIV transmission, you know, for risky sex.

But instead of asking people to stop doing these things, we just maybe can provide ways to enable safer use of drugs or safer ways to have sex.

So, you know, condoms are a great example.

Needle exchange programs for people who inject drugs is a great example.

And all of these methods historically have really worked, you know, to reduce infectious disease

...