Empowering community change makers through training.
With a focus on power-shifting and challenging harmful stereotypes around people who use drugs and people in recovery, BeHERE training and engagement activities provide the skills, knowledge, and resources needed to better serve your entire community. Learn more through trainings on overdose prevention, harm reduction, stigma, the racist history of drug policy, and more. ●
Overdose prevention starts with changing the narrative.
Everyone deserves an independent, healthy life. People who use drugs deserve the same opportunity. But outdated stereotypes and stigmas can prevent people who use drugs from the opportunity to thrive.
The BeHERE Training team builds life-saving skills and knowledge among communities and organizations to prevent overdose and provide rescue when it occurs. Our diverse catalog of trainings provides an expansive approach to harm reduction, building our trainees’ understanding of the ways substance use intersects with stigma, stereotypes, and racist systems.
We believe that everyone can play a direct, lifesaving role in helping to reduce overdose deaths and improving the health and connection of communities. ●
Creating the capacity for transformation
BeHERE Training builds capacity to transform policies and practices in prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and all kinds of recovery. We aim to advance racial equity in behavioral health, from the individual to the state level, through awareness and attitudes, access, and advocacy:
- Increasing awareness of the racist history of drug policies
- Changing attitudes toward people who use drugs and reduce drug-related stigma
- Building capacity to address behavioral health issues through trainings, events, technical assistance, and systems transformation
- Sharing approaches, ideas, and best practices around improving equitable access to services
- Advocating for change in organizational policies and practices around behavioral health
Providing resources for all who need them
Harm reduction happens in community. BeHERE Training works with communities that want to bring more harm reduction resources into their spaces, including:
- Corrections centers
- Shelters for the unhoused
- Family shelters
- Public libraries
- Public housing
- Other venues
We offer both in-person and virtual versions of our trainings for
- Service providers like recovery support staff, harm reduction practitioners, housing providers, librarians, job program staff, criminal legal system employees, and more
Service providers, see our trainings - Workplaces, particularly in high-risk industries like fishing, hospitality, construction
Learn more about recovery supportive workplaces - People who use drugs and those who love and care for them
Connect to our harm reduction services
Who We Are
Substance use, harm reduction, and more
Our team has experienced facilitators who develop engaging curricula around substance use, harm reduction, and other topics. They include people with lived and living experience with drug use, people in recovery, social workers, recovery supporters and coaches, and harm reductionists.
Our staff provide training and technical assistance in a wide variety of substance use and human services topics including:
- Overdose rescue and prevention
- Drug-related stigma and stereotypes
- Drug policy history and anti-racism
Other Offerings
The BeHERE Training suite is designed to build skills, provide tools and resources, and create opportunities for peer learning via in-person and virtual live training, webinar, and eLearning formats. We also support organizations and communities as they work to apply the newly learned skills and strategies.
BeHERE training and related technical assistance expertise includes:
- Assessment and evaluation
- Coalition building
- Collaborative leadership
- Community health improvement
- Action planning
- Engaging diverse populations
- Youth development and youth engagement
- Policy and environmental change strategies
- Communications and social marketing
- Motivational interviewing
- De-escalation
- Supporting people who use drugs
We also offer trainings of trainers (ToTs) to help agencies increase their capacity and sustainability in these topics.
Harm reduction begins with authenticity and trust
We’ve developed the BeHERE Training suite based on expressed community needs. Where others promote abstinence-only ideals, we take an inclusive approach to helping people use more safely and move toward the change they desire.
Our trainings aren’t one-size-fits-all; we tailor our work and train others to do the same. Community informed and community led, our solutions center and uplift the voices of those with lived experience around the intersections of substance use, racial equity, and public health — inclusive of all identities.
The goal? Sharing knowledge and tools across institutions, organizations, and communities, with a common purpose: preventing opioid overdose, promoting safer use, and building community, while improving public health for all.
Massachusetts Support for the BeHERE Training Suite
The BeHERE Training suite, a collection of overdose prevention and harm reduction trainings for human service agencies, is provided at no cost for Massachusetts-based service providers, thanks to very generous funding from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH).
BeHERE is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) State Opioid Response grants, administered through the DPH’s Bureau of Substance Addiction Services. The program supports the following activities:
- Developing and implementing trainings on various substance use and human services topics
- Trainings for other trainers, to help agencies increase their capacity and sustainability
- Convening service providers across Massachusetts to share best practices and cutting-edge solutions in overdose prevention, harm reduction, and substance use treatment
BeHERE Training opportunities are available out of state through other grants or fee-for-service contracts.