HIT Hot Topics 2016

The next HIT Hot Topics conference will be held on November 25th 2016.

Here is a selection of their newly announced speakers:

Deborah Peterson-Small began her political education and social activism early when, soon after graduating high school, she went to work for a national youth voter education organisation and organised the first state-wide voter registration campaign on the campuses of the State University of New York. She then studied law at Harvard and after several years as a corporate attorney she became Director of Public Policy & Community Outreach for the Drug Policy Alliance. After that, Deborah founded Break the Chains: Communities of Color and the War on Drugs, a public policy research and advocacy organisation committed to addressing the disproportionate impact of punitive drug policies on poor communities of colour. The mission of Break the Chains is to build the movement in communities of colour in support of drug policy reform, with the goal of replacing failed drug polices with alternatives based in science, compassion, public health and human rights. 

Aaron Goodman is the founder of StoryTurns (www.storyturns.org), an organization that leads innovative digital storytelling workshops with community groups around the world. Aaron recently collaborated with Providence Health Care in Vancouver to facilitate a digital storytelling workshop with drug users taking part in North America's first heroin-assisted treatment program. As a documentary photographer, Aaron has tried to create balanced and humanizing photos of injection drug users. Aaron is a faculty member in Journalism and Communication Studies at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, B.C. and completing his PhD in Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Q.C.

Michael Shiner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a a member of The Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy within LSE IDEAS. Michael has a long-standing interest in drugs and drugs policy and has published widely in the field. His main interests revolve around the place and meaning of drug use in late industrial societies, including patterns of use and desistance; drug law enforcement; and the politics of drug policy. He is author of Drug Use and Social Change: The Distortion of History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and co-author of The Numbers in Black and White: Ethnic Disparities in the Policing and Prosecution of Drug Offences in England and Wales (Release, 2013, with Niamh Eastwood and Daniel Bear).

Suzi Gage is a researcher at the University of Bristol, interested in understanding associations between substance use and mental health. In her spare time she writes a science blog for the Guardian, and has a podcast series, Say Why to Drugs, about the scientific evidence surrounding the risks and potential benefits of different recreational drugs. Suzi will be talking about effective drug science communication and the drugs podcast she presents with rapper Scroobius Pip.

Keith Sabin is a senior advisor for epidemiology with the Strategic Information and Evaluation Division of UNAIDS. He is a globally recognised leader in surveillance, particularly behavioural surveillance, with more than 40 peer-reviewed publications, and numerous training workshops worldwide, to his credit. His recent work focuses  on improving epidemic modelling and monitoring and evaluating HIV prevention programs providing services to high risk, socially vulnerable populations, such as sex workers, men who have sex with men, transgender people and people who inject illicit drugs. He holds a PhD from The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and an MPH from Columbia University School of Public Health. Keith will be speaking about the importance of actively involving people in the research you do on aspects of their lives.

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