Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #118719

Nancy Krieger, PhD, Dept of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, 617-432-1571, nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu

This session will consider, from a progressive standpoint, the question of evidence as it pertains to harm reduction. The reason for focusing on harm reduction is two-fold: (1) the public health importance of this topic, and (2) what it exposes about the politics of evidence. Thus, despite calls for improving the evidence-base of public health policy and practice, in the case of harm reduction, the evidence of its utility is repeatedly discounted by conservatives opposed to this strategy for reducing harms associated with use of illicit and licit psychoactive substances. To help illuminate the critical components of controversies around harm reduction and the politics of evidence, we accordingly are devoting our 4th Spirit of 1848 integrative session to this topic, in which the different presentations integrate the 3 themes of our caucus, concerning the inextricable links between social justice & public health, in relation to: (1) the politics of public health data; (2) the social history of public health; and (3) progressive pedagogy.

Learning Objectives: