Join Integrity House, health experts, and community leaders to learn about exciting new developments and best practices in behavioral health.
Integrating Harm Reduction Principles Into Substance Use Treatment Settings: Challenges and Opportunities
During this session, learn more about how harm reduction offers an alternative option to clients who are unable or unwilling to commit abstinence. Harm reduction focuses on reducing the negative consequences of drug use. This webinar will introduce practical strategies for incorporating harm reduction principles into work with substance use disorder treatment clients and discuss the challenges and opportunities of harm reduction-oriented interventions.
Friday, September 29, 2023, at 12:00 PM EST
Register Here
Meet Our Presenters
Svetlana Shpiegel, MSW, Ph.D.
Svetlana Shpiegel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work and Child Advocacy, Montclair State University, New Jersey. Her research focuses primarily on children, youth, and families involved with the child welfare system, and other systems of care. Dr. Shpiegel teaches graduate-level social work classes and serves as the coordinator of harm reduction education initiatives in her department.
Shonta D. Collins
Shonta D. Collins is the Owner and Managing Partner of a medical group and Psychiatric Mental Health NP at Rutgers University in the CARE Center focused on addiction medicine. Shonta’s background includes accolades of success in both academic, private practice and philanthropic arenas.
Shonta’s passion to be part of the greater good because she believes that the art and science of kindness, humility, gratitude, and respect is part of her DNA. Naturally, from grade school Shonta went door to door in her neighborhood to raise much needed funds for St. Jude and Special Olympics to middle school volunteering with local charities, food kitchens and donating toys to children over the holiday season to being honored and became a scholar for community service as a Debutante in high school.
Shonta was successful in her ability to learn that people can be supported with an extension of kindness which subsequently led her to continue her passion in bettering the community at large. She has also traveled to over 25 countries in the world committed to humanitarian and disaster relief work most notably in Haiti (over 100 humanitarian medical missions) and work in the city of Philadelphia.
Moreover, Shonta believes in the cause to support addiction medicine in order to engage others and include people from all walks of life. This collaboration is a pleasure and honor for Shonta to be a participant in this webinar because she seeks to be the reflection of what she wants to see in the world which is you!
Kelly LaBar, CPRS
Kelly has over 20 years lived experience in chaotic substance use and a return to balance. Kelly started in the substance use field in 2015 after working in the medical field for 10 years. She became involved in local recovery advocacy groups and started volunteering as a peer. Since then she has found her passion in Harm Reduction. The focus has been for our unhoused, actively using, LGBTQIA, and sex workers. Kelly has worked for non profits providing peer support, mobile street outreach, naloxone training, harm reduction kit distribution, case management, and CPRS class facilitation.
Kelly has worked tirelessly to gain trust in the community. She has also founded a peer led street outreach non profit, providing wound care, harm reduction supplies, peer support and case management, with a team of volunteers focused on autonomy, empathy, trust and dismantling the racist war on drugs while empowering our folx to access services.
Kelly has established numerous professional relationships with prevention organizations, medication assisted treatment providers, mental health organizations, nonprofits, grassroots organizations, and colleges. She has rallied for peer led harm reduction services at budget hearings, testified at the State House against bills fueling the racist war on drugs, spoke up at town halls in favor of opening a methadone clinic in her hometown, presented on structural stigma against PWUD and is a member of Montclair State University’s Harm Reduction Advisory Council.
Kelly’s greatest professional accomplishment is definitely being accepted as a trusted, reliable, non judgmental ally to PWUD. She genuinely accepts people as they are and is equipped to make them feel safe, valued and seen, even if it’s just for a moment
Meet Our Moderator
Eman Gibson, LCSW, LCADC, MBA (she/her/hers)
Eman Gibson, MBA, LCSW, LCADC, currently serves as the Chief Clinical Officer of Integrity House and has been with the organization since 2012. She oversees Integrity House’s inpatient and residential programs, which collectively provide 420 beds. Mrs. Gibson earned her Master in Social Work from Columbia University and her Master of Business Administration from Fitchburg State University. Her specialties include eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), transgender care, and trauma-informed care. She also serves on the Professional Advisory Committee for the New Jersey Department of Human Services, Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services, as surveyor of the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) and was recently appointed as Board Treasurer of the New Jersey branch of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (NJSAM). She is an adjunct professor of Psychology at Montclair State University and of Social Work at Rutgers University.
This lunch and learn session qualifies for 1.5 social work continue education units (CEU) for all attendees. Certificates will be issued by Integrity House.