Beyond Do No Harm

The Beyond Do No Harm Network is a group of US-based health care providers, public health workers, impacted community members, advocates, and organizers working across racial, gender, reproductive, migrant and disability justice, drug policy, sex worker, and anti-HIV criminalization movements to address the harm caused when health providers and institutions and public health researchers and institutions facilitate, participate in and support criminalization. Below we offer thirteen principles for supporting people’s agency, self-determination, dignity of risk, and general wellbeing.

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DISCUSSION GUIDE

  1. End police and ICE presence in hospitals, in or near health care facilities, and places where people are accessing care.

  2. End medically unnecessary information gathering, documentation, and surveillance.

  3. End medically unnecessary screening and testing without
    consent.

  4. End the practice of calling police on suspicion of fraudulent identification documents. 

  5. Stop calling police on people with unmet mental health
    needs.

  6.  Stop calling police on people in possession of, distributing, or using drugs and controlled substances.

  7. End mandated reporting.

  8. Stop supporting prosecution in cases against people who manage their own care or offer community-based care, fail to seek care, or fail to disclose their private medical information.

  9. Stop participating in or supporting prosecution in cases of transmission of infectious diseases.

  10. Stop participating or supporting prosecution in cases related to drug use or overdose.

  11. Stop providing and/or sanctioning substandard/violative care for people who are in custody or incarcerated in jails, prisons, detention centers, residential centers, group homes, and state facilities.

  12. Stop collaborating with the criminal punishment system to violate people in custody, including through performing cavity searches at the request of police or prison officials; evaluating competency to stand trial; experimenting on and sterilizing people who are incarcerated; facilitating torture; or administering the death penalty.

  13. Stop punishing other health care providers and staff, public health workers, and researchers by calling police on them, reporting them for disciplinary action, or terminating their employment for their refusal to participate in systems of harm.

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