New co-chairs to lead reinvigorated Community Drug Strategy for the City of Greater Sudbury
Issued: Tuesday, June 18, 2024You can sign up to receive drug alerts and warnings issued in our community by the Community Drug Strategy.
The Community Drug Strategy for the City of Greater Sudbury is announcing newly appointed co-chairs of its Executive Committee: Dr. M. Mustafa Hirji, Acting Medical Officer of Health and Chief Executive Officer for Public Health Sudbury & Districts, and Heidi Eisenhauer, Executive Director for Réseau ACCESS Network.
The Community Drug Strategy is realigning its structure to focus on the recommendations from the Greater Sudbury Summit on Toxic Drugs. This means shifting emphasis away from enforcement to more root cause approaches on health promotion, providing comprehensive supports like housing and employment, and substance use care.
“As the unregulated drug supply becomes more toxic, we must work collectively to reduce harms and save lives, while addressing the root social causes of this crisis to the best of our abilities. The reinvigorated Community Drug Strategy will build on the outcomes of the Greater Sudbury Summit on Toxic Drugs to develop and implement initiatives to address this complex issue,” said Dr. M. Mustafa Hirji, Acting Medical Officer of Health and Chief Executive Officer for Public Health Sudbury & Districts. “On behalf of the executive committee, I’d like to extend my thanks to the previous co-chairs, Dr. Penny Sutcliffe, former Medical Officer of Health for Public Health Sudbury & Districts and Greater Sudbury Police Service Chief Paul Pedersen, for their tireless efforts to make communities safer and reduce harm associated with substance use. Their leadership laid the strong foundation on which we now stand, ready to move the work forward together,” said Dr. Hirji.
The Community Drug Strategy is building on its foundation to strengthen community collaboration and aims to address harms associated with substance use with increased representation from people with lived and living experience, Indigenous community partners, BIPOC, 2SLGBTQ+, and experts in various fields.
“The refreshed structure and leadership of the Community Drug Strategy is another step forward in addressing the toxic drug crisis and strengthening our collaborative efforts as a community,” said Heidi Eisenhauer. “By adding wrap around supports, like housing, education, and stable employment as a stream of work within the Strategy, we are acknowledging the role that the lack of basic needs plays in the crisis. Substance use care will also combine the former harm reduction and treatment pillars to better represent individuals along the entire substance use spectrum. I welcome the opportunity to co-lead the Community Drug Strategy as we work toward a safer and healthier community for all,” said Heidi Eisenhauer.
The new streams of the Community Drug Strategy will address substance use and its impact on community health comprehensively. This will involve health promotion, education, and collaborative efforts, benefiting all members of the community. These approaches will support the community by increasing access to various services for health and well-being along the entire substance use spectrum and breaking down barriers by addressing stigma.
Focusing on the recommendations included in Honouring Voices, Embracing Perspectives, Moving Forward: A Summary Report on the Greater Sudbury Summit on Toxic Drugs (PDF), the new streams will allow for coordinated action to address substance use health and the toxic drug crisis.
For more information on the Community Drug Strategy and substance use, please visit phsd.ca/cds.
This item was last modified on June 18, 2024