What are these silver pods doing in the U-District?

They popped up quickly, nearly overnight last month in the University District — two silver pods appearing like walk-up coffee stands. But they aren’t serving coffee. They’ll soon be providing health services for injection drug users.

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That’s the goal for the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance, which operates a needle exchange out of the University Temple United Methodist Church.

“We just added some temporary containers to create some offices and a supply area for the exchange,” said Shilo Murphy, executive director of the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance. “(One goal) is to have a place to do some Hep-C testing and have a doctor to prescribe Suboxone.”

Suboxone is a drug that treats opiate addiction.

“We are looking to do much more of a drug-user health center, not quite a clinic, but a place where drug users can come and get basic medical care,” Murphy said.

Beyond the pods

Murphy said the silver pods are currently only for office expansion and to provide health services in the future. But soon after they went up, rumors that they would serve as safe-injection sites circulated the U-District. That’s not the case, but Murphy is open to the idea. He said that his organization has let authorities know they would consider designating the pods as such sites.

“Nothing has been decided and nothing has been approved … we’ve been publicly supportive of it,” Murphy said. “I was on the (county opiate addiction) task force. This is why I wanted to push for Suboxone, because I was on the treatment side of the task force. I think we need to focus on treatment-on-demand.”

Murphy views a safe-injection site as he does a small health clinic — a place to directly address addicts and their need to get off the drug.

“I think the safer consumption rooms are going to always be a piece of (the solution), especially as a link to care,” he said. “Folks can come in, get proper health care, get proper education, get tested, get their abscesses looked at, and get on the treatment side of things. Let’s be totally blunt. If you are homeless and in chaos and in a lot of trauma … whether it’s from the drugs, or life, or you’re a vet, there is going to be a lot of folks who want to get on treatment. And we should make it easily accessible.”

“Every day I go to the exchange, people ask me about treatment, and it’s waiting lists and hoops that we have to go through for each person,” Murphy said. “And it’s frustrating when you see someone right there in front of you who wants access to treatment and is not able to get in. Especially when the city has acknowledged the heroin crisis.”

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