Resources:
Jenny Rose Ryan's Feature Article: Harm reduction efforts seek to reduce high overdose rates in Ypsi
Transcription:
Lee Van Roth: You're listening to 89.1 WEMU. I'm Lee Van Roth, and this is On the Ground Ypsi. At 211 East Michigan Avenue here in downtown Ypsi, a small organization called LEAF Harm Reduction is working to meet those struggling with substance abuse in our community where they're at, offering everything from clean syringes and drug checking to food, respite, and compassion. LEAF's mission is rooted in harm reduction, a public health approach that focuses on saving lives, reducing harm, and treating everyone with dignity. And it's making a measurable difference with overdose deaths in Michigan having dropped significantly over the past year, thanks in part to programs just like this one. Joining me today to talk about the work LEAF is doing, how it partners with other Ypsi orgs, and why harm reduction is so critical to the health of this community is LEAF Harm Reduction Director, Corn Williams. Hi, Corn! Thanks so much for being here today!
Corn Williams: Hi! Happy to be here!
Lee Van Roth: So, for listeners who might not be familiar, can you give us just a brief explanation of what harm reduction means and what it looks like and how this approach differs from other approaches organizations might use when addressing this population?
Corn Williams: Yeah, absolutely! I think harm reduction, kind of as a modality, reaches across treatment needs. So, what we're talking about is harm reduction specific to substance use disorder, right? But we can apply harm reduction principles of compassion and empathy and also lightweight behavioral modification that comes from an individual's agency, rather than some punitive corrective measure. We can apply that across the board. If we wanted to, we could apply that to our economic strategy. We could apply it to our political strategies. When it comes to substance use disorder, the goal is to get folks thinking about their use patterns. Generally, we engage folks who are in more chaotic states in their life, and we're trying to ask folks to kind of look at some of the behaviors that might be contributing to the chaos and start to kind make a plan around reducing some of those behaviors, hopefully to get some different outcomes. And, from a public health perspective, the goal is really to get folks thinking about how their day-to-day engagements determine their health outcomes. And so, we're really focusing on social determinants of health and kind of trying to curb some of those disparities. And in Washtenaw County, unfortunately, those who have diagnosed and undiagnosed substance use disorder and are at highest risk for negative health outcomes are unhoused folks and Black and Brown people or other marginalized populations. And so, the goal of this intervention is to really, really focus those at-risk groups in an effort to build a level of community resilience kind of from the bottom up.
Lee Van Roth: That was another thing I wanted to touch base with you on is discussing this aspect of how these issues surrounding substance use disorder and substance use in general. Particularly, here in Washtenaw County, we see a disproportionate effect on these marginalized communities like you mentioned. And I'm curious how LEAF has chosen or developed this method of focusing its services into these specific populations to ensure that do exactly what you said and kind of build up from the ground this overall community of caring.
Corn Williams: Yeah. So, we have a really interesting dynamic in Washtenaw County, socially, where we have a county that, socioeconomically, has some pretty brash disparities. And so, what that looks like is we have a very resourced county with several under-resourced municipalities. And coincidentally, Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township, being the county's only historically Black municipalities, also carry a lot of the resource gaps. And so, Ypsilanti, as a municipality, statistically holds a large portion of the fatal overdoses and a significant portion of the unhoused population. And so, by offering stabilization resources for folks who are dealing with housing instability and by offering harm reduction services for substance use disorder or folks with undiagnosed substance use disorders, specifically in Ypsilanti, we kind of are able to, by having drop-in services there, kind of reach our target population. And the state health department, who is, for fiscal year '26, kind of funding this entire project, they are very interested in addressing disparities around housing instability and also racial demographic, just because this county, in particular, across the state, ranks relatively poorly relative to maintaining proportionate health outcomes for folks who are using substances.
Lee Van Roth: And I'm sure that a lot of this work, or maybe even all of this work, is really most possible when you're communicating with other organizations in the area, too, and compiling these resources, as opposed to having all of these separate islands of resources. Can you tell me a little bit about what those collaborations might look like, or organizations or institutions that LEAF collaborates with regularly to get these resources out to people?
Corn Williams: Yeah. So, one great thing about the city of Ypsi is that there's a really established mutual aid network. And so, there are entities who have been working to mitigate negative outcomes from destabilization in the city for a while now. And so, we partner with groups like Solidarity House and Washtenaw Camp Outreach. Peace House is another great mutual aid space in the city. And so, the goal is, because it does seem like within the nonprofit industrial complex, if that's what you want to call it, it appears that we have a lot of folks who have aligned values that are working in different directions. And I think that level of compartmentalization kind of has us spinning our wheels when it comes to actually getting solutions put in place. And I think a big part of that is funding scarcity. And so, the state health department kind of earmarking these funds, specifically for the city of Ypsi, puts us in a unique space, especially with a location that is big enough to host multiple different organizations, it puts us in a unique position to kind of mesh resource provision in a way that it hasn't been presented before in Ypsi. And hopefully, that will get us closer to kind getting a more sustainable solution in place. And so, the idea for LEAF, aside from being a hub where folks who are in need of stabilization resources can come and receive services, it also is intended to be a space where other service providers can kind of come in and provide resources to folks who were there kind of with a dedicated space to do so. And that has not been offered yet here. And so, kind of the hope is that we can kind of we can all come together and kind of uplift the city.
Lee Van Roth: This is WEMU's On the Ground Ypsi. I'm talking with Corn Williams, the director of the Ypsi-based org, LEAF Harm Reduction. So, Corn, you mentioned a few of the hurdles or challenges that you see at LEAF. I'm curious if there are any other difficulties and things that you face in this work, particularly when it comes to harm reduction itself.
Corn Williams: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, folks have a misconception around substance use in general. I think it's been heavily stigmatized largely kind of by our moral indoctrination, through the war on drugs and decades of policy that has demonized substances, rather than addressing trauma, which is kind of the base route, in my opinion of chaotic substance use. The message is that we're trying to improve the health of the community at large. And we're doing that by getting folks talking and thinking about making better decisions around their health outcomes. And the hope is that if we can engage someone in that conversation and they actually start to think about improving their health outcomes relative to their substance use, then the next step is engagement in primary care and looking at, maybe, addressing some more chronic issues that they've been dealing with that perpetuate the trauma that leads to more chaotic use patterns.
Lee Van Roth: For anyone who might be struggling themselves, know someone who could use a resource like this, or even folks that want to help out with the mission over at LEAF, how do they find you? How do they get involved?
Corn Williams: The best way is really just to come by. We're on the second floor of 211 East Michigan Avenue. We're open seven days a week from 8 to 5. And we would love to see folks in spades to come and bring ideas on how we can better serve the community and come with programming. The hope is that folks in the community that want to see a change will see LEAF as a place that they can come and kind of begin to enact that. And so, yeah, the doors are open, and we hope to see folks there!
Lee Van Roth: Well, Corn, thank you so much for joining me here today! And thank you and the team over at LEAF for helping make sure our neighbors are safer!
Corn Williams: Yeah, thank you so much! It's been a pleasure!
Lee Van Roth: For more on today's conversation and a link to the full article, visit our website at WEMU.org. On the Ground Ypsi is brought to you in partnership with Concentrate Media. I'm Lee Van Roth, and this is your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU-FM Ypsilanti. Celebrating 60 years of broadcasting at Eastern Michigan University!
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