YDHF have made it a priority to proactively engage in work and discussions to address the stigma and discrimination experienced by people who use drugs.

The December forum of YDHF will look at the stigma and discrimination experienced by people who use drugs in accessing the health care that they need as a human rights issue.

Access to health care for people who use drugs – what I know about this issue, what I think is needed to fix it

Speakers:

• Keynote address Associate Professor Kate Seear, Principal Research Fellow in the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2021-) and a practising solicitor.
• Uncle Bobby Nicholls – Proud Yorta Yorta, Dja Dja Wurrung, and Wadjabalok man
  Challenges around Aboriginal access to treatment and health as a right. Where’s the model determined and run by Aboriginal communities?
• Richard di Natale – Public Health advisor for Cohealth
  Human rights and health services for people who use drugs
  Before being elected to federal parliament, Dr Richard Di Natale was a GP and public health specialist.
  He has worked as a drug and alcohol clinician in regional Victoria and in public health at the Nossal Institute where he established an opioid substitution program in northeast India.
  Richard was elected as Victoria’s first Greens Senator to the federal parliament in 2010 and was parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens between 2015 and 2020.
  He now works as a Public Health advisor for Cohealth, a large not-for-profit community health service.

• Mukhtar Mohammed, Co-ordinator – Muslim Connect program Islamic Council of Victoria
  Challenges with the Islamic community /African communities/people of colour
• Adam Willson, Senior Drug Outreach Lawyer, Fitzroy Legal Service
  Local legal service perspective
• Tricia Szirom, Immediate pase CEO at VIMIAC
  A retrospective – where have we been , where have we come to , where to in the future?