BDNH Storytelling Project: Wound Care as Liberatory Harm Reduction

A Zine Story

Storyteller: Louise Vincent, Executive Director of a drug user health hub
Zine Art and Design: Rommy Torrico

In this story, a national leader in the movement for harm reduction discusses the importance of wound care and the role of health care workers in fighting stigma and providing accessible care. 

This story is part of the Beyond Do No Harm Network’s Storytelling Media Project, which seeks to highlight and amplify the actions individual medical providers are already taking to interrupt criminalization in the context of care, in the hopes of increasing awareness of the harmful impacts of criminalization within the medical system and inspiring others to take action at multiple levels.

Check out the zine below!

• Discussion Questions and Prompts

  • What is different about the wound care rooms Louise describes compared to traditional health care settings?

  • What is one way that health care workers can embody "cop-like" behaviors?

  • What is one action or practice health care workers can do differently to make health care safer and more accessible for people who use drugs?

• About the Artist

  Rommy Torrico is a formerly undocumented, queer, trans nonbinary visual artist born in Iquique, Chile and raised in Florida. They have been involved in social movement spaces encompassing (im)migrant, queer and trans rights struggles for over a decade and infuse much of their work with personal experience and the stories their communities share. Over the years, Rommy’s work has been included in several publications and exhibited at the Getty Museum, the Smithsonian Museum, the Library of Congress and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía as well as many galleries and museums throughout the Americas and internationally. Learn more about Rommy here.