WHOSE RESEARCH? OURS!
A Community-Led Conversation about
Substance Use, Harm Reduction,
and Recovery Research
in Rhode Island
was held on
Thursday, March 7, 2024
10:00 AM - 3:30 PM
Providence Public Library
Read our Committee Statement that emerged from conversations at the unconference between communities and researchers connected to and in the harm reduction and recovery space. As we continue to develop what was discussed at the event, we will post updates on this website. Stay tuned!
Below is an archive of the unconference website prior to the event held on Tursday, March 7, 2024.
What’s the idea?
To create an annual event where members of our diverse communities, organizations, researchers, students, and activists can talk with one another about research concerning substance use, harm reduction, recovery, and related topics (housing, incarceration, social justice...)
Academic research in marginalized communities often takes without giving back, depicts communities in stigmatizing terms, and relies on the unpaid labor of community members. Still, at its best, research can highlight injustice, amplify silenced voices, and work together with communities to create new solutions. This event will talk about what is being done right, what researchers are doing wrong, and how to strengthen relationships between researchers and community organizations/members.
This conference grew out of earlier work by many individuals and organizations (including Project Weber/RENEW, RICARES, and the community advisory board of the COBRE on Opioids and Overdose) to develop principles of community-empowered research to guide substance use research in Rhode Island.
This isn’t a typical
conference!
Unlike a regular conference, the topics of discussion will be submitted by participants and not dictated by the organizers. We are particularly interested in topics proposed by community members and organizations.
PROPOSING SESSIONS Participants can submit topics that they want to discuss in advance by filling out this online form, by email, phone, or in-person at the start of the event on March 7th. We are also planning a pre-event workshop to brainstorm topics and show folks how to submit proposals. UPDATE: We are accepting in-person proposals only from here on out.
CHOOSING SESSIONS: On the day of the conference, session proposals will be reviewed together as a group and participants will vote on which sessions they would like to attend. The sessions with the most votes will take place.
RUNNING SESSIONS: Sessions will not be academic presentations. The person who proposed the session can have the opportunity to introduce the topic for up to 5 minutes if they would like and then it will be an open discussion about the nature of the problem and possible solutions.
SAMPLE TOPICS: Community members and organizations will determine the topics and vote on what gets discussed. You get to choose. Any topic aimed at improving community/research collaboration, or building on community/researcher collaborations that are currently working, is fair game.
- Setting better standards for reimbursements for research participation
- Amplifying marginalized voices in research
- Creating career paths for people with lived experience in research
- Challenges to collaboration between researchers and community organizations
- How to do research in a way that is trauma-informed and less invasive
Who will be there?
People who use drugs, people in recovery, harm reduction workers, peer recovery specialists, community allies and activists, university researchers, medical researchers, students. Anyone, from any community, impacted by substance use or the “War on Drugs.”
Neither harm reduction nor community-engaged participatory research would exist without sex workers, Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, queer/trans people, disabled people, and people with lived experience of incarceration. All are welcome!
What are the goals?
Center voices with lived experience. Build stronger relationships. Tackle problems together. Set out an agenda for institutional change. Work towards concrete results.