Illaria Dana

Illaria (she/her) is the Syringe Services Program (SSP) Coordinator at Prevention Point Philadelphia. She ensures that nearly 25,000 people who use drugs (PWUD) receive harm reduction supplies, safer use education, navigation to testing services and treatment, and survival resources per year. She approaches harm reduction with a person-centered, holistic framework that does not require PWUD to reduce or stop drug use in order to reduce harms from the war on PWUD. Prior to her work at PPP, she organized with drug user- and sex worker-led organizations and practiced harm reduction in rural communities in New England. In this context, she piloted a harm reduction advocacy training program for youth, an organizing group for PWUD in treatment facilities, and facilitated numerous overdose reversal and response trainings.

Prevention Point Philadelphia (PPP) is a nonprofit public health organization providing harm reduction services in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas. Founded as an extension of ACT UP Philadelphia in 1991, PPP started as a grassroots organization providing then-illegal sterile syringes across the city. After thirty years of working with the local community of people who use drugs (PWUD), PPP now offers case management, medical care, overdose prevention education and naloxone distribution, opioid agonist treatment, housing, meals, and mail services along with syringe services.