Episode description:

When Governments Choose Recovery Over Risk Mitigation – A Conversation with Kym Kaufmann | UHP S5E1

In this episode of the ⁠Unnecessary Harm Podcast⁠, Shane Varcoe sits down with Kim Kaufmann, CEO of the ⁠Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence⁠ (CORE), a crown corporation established by the Alberta government to research best practices in recovery and build a rigorous evidence base for recovery-oriented systems of care.

Kim brings a rare combination of front-line clinical experience, senior government leadership and hard-won policy expertise. As former Deputy Minister of Mental Health and Community Wellness in Manitoba, she built and led the first standalone mental health and addiction ministry in the country, only to be terminated when a new government shifted policy direction toward a harm reduction only model. Alberta quickly came calling, and CORE was born.

In this conversation we cover:

• Why harm reduction without recovery is not balance – it is abandonment with better branding
• The Alberta model and what a recovery-oriented system of care actually looks like on the ground
• The landmark CORE study published in the journal Addiction evaluating supervised consumption site closures – and what the data actually showed
• Why the language of recovery is being hijacked, redefined and weaponised by bad policy actors
• The 40% reduction in overdose deaths in Alberta versus just 5% in the rest of Canada, and what made the difference
• What families universally want for their loved ones caught in addiction and why policy keeps ignoring it

As ⁠Anne Marie Ward⁠ so powerfully stated – and Shane quotes in this episode “harm reduction without recovery is not balance, it is abandonment with better branding”. Kim Kaufmann is one of the people doing something about that.

Connect with CORE: ⁠recoveryexcellence.org