The number of people that the Pacific Pride Foundation serves in a program designed to reduce the spread of HIV and other blood-borne diseases has nearly doubled over the last three years.
Through the organization’s syringe exchange program, it collects used syringes from injection drug users and provides them with sterile syringes to use instead. The Pacific Pride Foundation operates the program one day a week in Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, and Lompoc, said Matt Pennon, the organization’s manager of North County programs and services.
During fiscal year 2017-18, the Pacific Pride Foundation served 839 different clients, which is nearly double the 420 clients it served in fiscal year 2015-16, according to a recently released report from the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department.
The county authorized the Pacific Pride Foundation to begin operating the program in 2000 but doesn’t provide any funding. Joy Kane, a senior epidemiologist with the county health department, said state law requires the department to present a report on the program at a public hearing once every two years.
Along with doubling the number of clients, the Pacific Pride Foundation also distributed and collected more than double the number of syringes between fiscal years 2015-16 and 2017-18.
A portion of these increases can be attributed to the Pacific Pride Foundation starting operations in Lompoc in 2016. But this site only made up 20 percent of the total number of clients who used the program in fiscal year 2017-18. During that time, 44 percent of the clients were from Santa Maria and 36 percent were from Santa Barbara.
More than the addition of services in Lompoc, Pennon said he believes these increases can be attributed to a heightened local awareness of the program, as well as a shift in the nation’s attitude toward drug users.
“For so long, we have taken IV drug users and people that are using and put them in the shadows … and now we’re looking at, ‘Hey, yes we know you’re doing something that’s harming your body, but we want to actually respect you and treat you like a human being,’” Pennon said.
During the syringe exchange process, Pennon said the Pacific Pride Foundation offers HIV and Hepatitis C screening to its clients. According to the report, in fiscal year 2017-18, no clients tested for HIV and 17.6 percent of the 85 clients screened tested positive for Hepatitis C.
But the program is designed to do more than just provide drug users with clean syringes to prevent the spread of diseases. Pennon said it also allows the Pacific Pride Foundation to create relationships with people and hopefully connect them with additional services, such as drug treatment programs.
According to the report, the organization referred 58 percent of its clients to substance abuse counseling and 21 percent to mental health services in fiscal year 2017-18.
“It’s not just that exchanging of syringes with the client, but it’s looking at how do we help this population decrease their usage or eventually get to stopping,” Pennon said.
This article appears in Dec 26, 2019 – Jan 2, 2020.