At this time of year, we review our activities of the previous year. Join us as we look back on 2015 through the lens of HONOReform.
OUR MISSION AND VISION HONOReform is the only national advocacy organization dedicated to protecting patients by safeguarding the medical injection process “from manufacturing to disposal.” Our vision is a nation in which healthcare providers always follow fundamental injection safety practices that protect patients with every injection.
HONOREFORM INTERNATIONAL Evelyn McKnight shared her story and the ongoing efforts of HONOReform at the landmark World Health Organization Safe Injection Gliobal Network meeting. At the end of the meeting, WHO representatitves shared the goal of having single-use only injection devices in use in developing countries by 2020. Additionally, Steve Langan represented HONOReform in Glasgow, Scotland at the first international meeting hosted by the World Hepatitis Alliance.
PRESENTATIONS AND MEDIA Led by co-founder and president Evelyn McKnight, who frequently presents her story and the ongoing need to always use safe healthcare practices, HONOReform presented at 30 events in 2015 attended by over 2500 people. HONOReform was featured in local and national media dozens of times in 2015, including an appearance in the May 21 US News and World Report article, “Unsafe Injections Put Patients in Peril.”
HONOREFORM OUTREACH Evelyn and HONOReform are active on social media, particularly twitter (#HONOReform). On our streamlined website, click on “JOIN THE CONVERSATION” to receive up-to-the-minute information from HONOReform (on Twitter and Facebook). Also, be sure to check out and subscribe to the HONOReform blog, “Survivor Stories,” edited by Evelyn and Lauren Lollini. To submit an idea for our blog or an article, contact Steve Langan at 402.659.6343 or steve@www.HONOReform.org.
OUR ACADEMIC PARTNERS HONOReform appreciates the many opportunities this year to meet, in person and online, with students from numerous universities and colleges, as they studied the consequences of unsafe injections. We welcome the opportunity to share the HONOReform story and highlight the need to always emphasize injection safety. Our academic partners include University of Nebraska-Omaha, Midland University, Methodist Nursing College, the College of St Mary, St Louis Univerity and Southeast Community College – among others.
THE SIPC AND THE CAMPAIGN HONOReform is a proud member of the Safe Injection Practices Coalition (SIPC), which provides support for the One and Only Campaign. The SIPC continues to develop and distribute its award-winning materials, and we continue to raise awareness among healthcare providers and patients about the absolute need for safe injection practices. As always, please contact HONOReform and allow us to help you access the matierals that will be most useful to you and your institution-if you are a healthcare worker-or your family-if you are a patient.
HONORESPONSE Sadly, some healthcare providers in the United States continue to reuse and misuse medical equipment, including syringes. Additional focus areas this year included reuse and misuse of single- and multi-dose vials of medication and responding to increasing reports of drug diversion among healthcare workers. Through the HONOResponse program, HONOReform is poised to help patients and communitities immediately following a patient notification or confirmed outbreak.
SOME GOALS FOR 2016 Thank you to our supporters for helping us work toward these goals:
To develop an education program, at no or reduced cost, on injection safety for healthcare workers and to work in tandem with colleagues to advance these and other infection prevention efforts.
To organize and help host a national meeting on drug diversion prevention and then to follow up on the action steps we adopt at the meeting to influence mitigation and elimination of the problem.
To continue to encourage international leaders to focus on making injection safety a priority.
