principles of
Healing-Centered Harm Reduction

Originally published in 2019, and updated  in 2022 and 2025, Reframe Health & Justice's Principles of Healing-Centered Harm Reduction (HCHR) offer an adaptation of the original harm reduction principles, connecting them to broader movements for healing, safety, and justice. As it currently stands, HCHR is a set of practical strategies and a movement that addresses the harms perpetuated by an unjust society through increased accountability, community mobilization, and the redistribution of resources. It is a continuum between surviving and thriving, between harm reduction and healing.

We offer capacity-building on translating these principles into practice (workshops, technical assistance, webinars, and more) - you can learn more under the "Conflict Transformation & Community Care" tab under Services.

The poster below, gorgeously crafted by Emulsify Design, can also be downloaded from our Resources page.

ADAPTATION | HCHR acknowledges that harm is an inevitable part of the human experience. Responding to harm is one of the many ways we learn how to navigate the world. In a world shaped by oppression, harm that has been done lives on in the bodies and communities that have borne the brunt of systemic brutalization. We can condemn harm while also celebrating the resilient beings we have become as a result. HOLISTIC | HCHR recognizes that harm happens on both an interpersonal and an institutional/structural level, and that holistic approaches seek to reduce the harm perpetuated by both. DIFFERENCE | HCHR understands that people experience the world differently. What is harmful or traumatic for one individual may be an act of resilience or joy to another. These perceptions and experiences can evolve over time. CYCLES | HCHR stresses that harm – both experienced and perpetuated – is sometimes a result of the lengths some people must go to survive in the face of institutional trauma and violence. HONOR | HCHR honors the many ways that survival and healing look without condemning or glorifying how people survive and heal. TIME AND SPACE | HCHR values the act of holding space and time for rest, connection, learning, unlearning, elevation, and liberation. Growth and change require patience, effort and care. ANTI-OPPRESSION | HCHR underscores the impact of shared, individual, and intersecting experiences of anti-Blackness and racism, colonization, imperialism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism and other oppressions. TRANSFORMATIVE AND PRACTICAL | HCHR designs tailored approaches to restoration and reparation, as well as practical strategies to reduce harm and increase access to resources. COMMUNITY-LED | HCHR uplifts community-based, inter-generational, and cultural approaches to resilience, healing, and harm reduction led by the people most impacted by the issues at hand. Harm reduction is fundamentally dependent on mutual aid and support. ACCOUNTABILITY | HCHR rejects reliance on violent and exploitative state-sponsored systems like prisons, detention centers, and civil commitment, where we recognize that our care systems are often embedded or complicit. We hold this tension and struggle together to build anti-violence into being. Holding systems of power and privilege accountable, we address power imbalances through transformative justice models that prioritize restoration over punishment.

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Reframe Health and Justice supports organizations and movements in deepening their practices of care, compassion, and collaboration.
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