RECAP Health Services

03/17/2026

🍀 Happy St. Patrick’s Day from RECAP 🍀

Today is about community, connection, and looking out for one another 💚

While many celebrate, we remember that not everyone has a safe place to go home to and not everyone can celebrate safely. Harm reduction saves lives, every day.

💉 Access to clean supplies prevents infections like Hepatitis C
🏥 Testing and treatment for HCV can cure and change lives
🏠 Housing is healthcare—everyone deserves a safe place to rest
🤝 Compassion over judgment makes our communities stronger

Whether it’s checking in on a friend, carrying naloxone, or supporting local outreach—small actions matter.

Let’s celebrate with kindness, awareness, and care for ALL members of our community 💚

03/11/2026

A new, much needed service for our province 💙❤️

New Brunswickers can now call one toll-free number to learn about their options and book an appointment for abortion services.

This centralized self-referral provides details about both medical and surgical abortion options and helps individuals schedule an appointment that works best for them, whether it’s the soonest available or the closest location.

To access the service, call 1-844-806-9205.

Callers may be asked to leave a voicemail and will receive a callback during operating hours (8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday to Friday).

Every New Brunswicker deserves accessible, timely reproductive healthcare, and this service is here to make it easier and more coordinated.

Learn more: https://www.gnb.ca/en/topic/health-wellness/sexual-health/abortion.html

03/05/2026

This year’s symposium, “It’s Time to Listen,” is about ending stigma and elevate the voices of people with lived experience. We will provide a platform from people who use substances, their families, and those who support them. They will share their struggles, strength, and success stories.

We will highlight voices from Indigenous communities and talk about the need for better in-patient policies to support people in care. We will also share stories that put a human face on this crisis and show how outreach programs are bringing health care to people who face unfair health gaps.

We recognize the people affected by substance use and the workers who help reduce harm and save lives.

Substance use disorder is a health issue—not a moral failure. Laws and health policies must reflect this. Harm reduction should be a top priority for the public, leaders, and health workers. We need better public education, stronger health care training, teamwork across professions, and creative community programs. It’s time to work together and build a more connected and caring system.
You will hear about real programs that reduce stigma and make a difference—from grassroots efforts to team-based care models. These examples show what is possible when harm reduction is at the center of care. Let’s create real change together, where harm reduction is a foundation of care for everyone.

The event is free. Donations are welcome and will go to local harm reduction projects in New Brunswick through Avenue B Inc. The event will offer English and French closed captioning.

02/28/2026

Please take the time to read this. 🥺🙏🏼

I used to work the rigs out west. Fort McMurray. Long shifts. Frozen mornings. Steel-toed boots and hands that could lift more than most men’s pride.

I'm from Saint John. South end kid. Grew up watching ships come and go and swore I’d be one of them. Leave. Make money. Send some home. Come back with stories.

I did good for a while. Then I fell. One bad step. One slick patch. One second that split my life into before and after. My back never came back from that.

In the 90s, the doctor handed me a prescription like it was Tylenol. OxyContin. “Safe,” he said. “Non-addictive,” he said. I took it because I wanted to work. I wanted to stand up straight again. I wanted to sleep without feeling like someone was driving a railroad spike through my spine.

And it worked. For a while. Then the early 2000s came and suddenly everyone acted shocked. Suddenly the same pills they told us were safe were evil. Suddenly I wasn’t a hard-working guy with an injury, I was a liability.

They cut me off. Just like that. No taper. No plan. No understanding of what happens when your body depends on something and your spine still feels like shattered glass.

I was in pain. So much pain. Surgery? Ten percent chance it would help. Ninety percent chance I’d end up worse. So I found something that worked.

He**in doesn’t ask for paperwork. It doesn’t care about your MRI results. It just makes the pain quiet enough to breathe.

You want to judge me? Try walking on a spine that feels like it’s collapsing in on itself. I didn’t start with needles because I wanted to. I started because I was desperate. Because withdrawal on top of spinal pain is a kind of torture I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

I quit street dope five years ago. Five. Nobody threw a parade. Nobody wrote an article. Nobody said, “Holy hell, that must have been hard.” It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Now I’m on iOAT. Medical grade Dilaudid. Prescribed. Supervised. Legal. It keeps me stable. It keeps me from chasing something dangerous. It keeps me alive.
But I’m still homeless.

I still can’t work. I can barely walk some days. When the damp fog rolls in off the Bay, it feels like my spine is rusting from the inside.

People don’t see any of that. They see a homeless drug addict. They don’t see the rig worker who broke his back building someone else’s economy. They don’t see the guy who did exactly what the doctor told him to do. They don’t see the five years without dirty dope.

They don’t see the discipline it takes to show up to iOAT every single day instead of disappearing into the street supply.

They see a problem. I see a man who survived a system that first flooded him with pills and then abandoned him when it got embarrassed.

I didn’t wake up one morning and dream of this life. I wanted to work. I wanted to come home with money in my pocket, take care of my mom. Meet a nice girl. Have a family. I wanted to stand up straight.

Now I just want housing with a door that locks. A bed that doesn’t wreck my back. A chance to be seen as more than the worst chapter of my story. But it’s easier for people to say, “He chose that.”

Trust me. If I could choose again, I’d choose the rigs.
I’d choose my back unbroken. I’d choose the version of me people respected.

Instead, I choose every day to stay alive. And for some reason, that’s still not enough for you.

02/20/2026

We are all about kindness week. Thank you Victory Meat & Produce Market for the bag of goodies. Our staff and participants enjoyed them 💙❤️

02/14/2026

❤️ Roses are red. Harm reduction works. ❤️

This Valentine’s Day, we’re not talking about chocolate.
We’re talking about compassion with receipts.

At RECAP, love looks like:
💊 💉OAT and iOAT that keep people alive
🩺 🦠Hep C testing and treatment that actually cures
🚑 ⚕️Naloxone in every pocket
🫶 💟Care that doesn’t require “readiness”

We don’t make people prove they deserve healthcare.
We meet them where they’re at.

Because harm reduction isn’t enabling.
It’s evidence-based. ✅
It’s cost-effective. ✅
It saves lives. ✅

Happy Valentine’s Day from the RECAP team — where our love language is dignity.💙❤️

02/14/2026

💙💟💙

Naloxone nasal spray kits for emergency use are available on our Fredericton and Saint John campuses, including our residences and Moncton site. These kits, introduced in January 2025, are part of a coordinated effort to support emergency response readiness and promote safety across our university community.

The rise of opioid use in New Brunswick and the subsequent increase in opioid-related overdoses and deaths reflect a concerning trend across Canada. Making naloxone accessible is a proactive step toward supporting the safety and well-being of individuals on our campuses.

Visit https://bit.ly/3WhL9nJ for more information on naloxone, where to access kits in an emergency, training, resources and supports related to opioid use and risk for overdose.

02/12/2026

02/06/2026

🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼

Oh Canada 🇨🇦 Harm reduction in Canada was never meant to stand alone but that’s exactly how it’s been implemented.

Over the past decade, policies like supervised consumption sites, safe supply programs, and decriminalization efforts have been rolled out as headline solutions to the overdose crisis.
In theory, harm reduction saves lives by meeting people where they are. In practice, without the proper supports wrapped around it, it has proven deeply ineffective and in some cases, harmful to both users and communities.

Harm reduction only works when it’s part of a full continuum of care. That means accessible detox, long term treatment, mental health services, housing, income support, and meaningful pathways to recovery.
In Canada, those supports are underfunded, wait listed, or simply unavailable. We’ve focused on keeping people alive day to day, while failing to help them build lives worth staying alive for.

Supervised consumption sites can prevent overdoses, but they don’t treat addiction. Safe supply can reduce poisoning from toxic drugs, but without medical oversight, counseling, and exit options, it risks entrenching dependency.
Decriminalization without treatment doesn’t remove harm, it just shifts it into public spaces, leaving users stuck and communities frustrated.

The result is a system that manages decline instead of promoting recovery. People cycle through emergency rooms, shelters, jails, and the streets with no clear off ramp. Families watch loved ones survive overdose after overdose, only to be told there are no treatment beds available.
Frontline workers are burned out, trying to fill gaps that policy refuses to acknowledge.

Criticizing the way harm reduction has been implemented is not the same as opposing compassion. In fact, it’s the opposite. True compassion means refusing to accept a status quo where survival is the only goal and recovery is treated as optional or unrealistic.

Canada doesn’t have a harm reduction problem, we have a support problem. Until housing, treatment, mental health care, and recovery services are built at the same scale as harm reduction policies, we will continue to fail the very people these programs claim to help.

If you think people deserve, and your community deserves better, then share this with every politician and person you know because nothing changes if we stay silent and keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Peoples lives depend on it.
People helping people is what it’s all about.❤️
Much love everyone!! Stay safe out there.

Charles Burrell
Founder
The Humanity Project for Social Solutions Inc.
✌️

01/18/2026

01/15/2026

One of RECAP’s founders Dr. Duncan Webster, from Saint John, discussing respiratory illnesses 🦠 😷