Middletown Harm Reduction Initiative (MHRI) aims to deliver culturally cognizant, non-judgmental, non-coercive care to individuals in the Middletown community in need of harm reduction services. We achieve this through the distribution of resources for safer use as well as community education efforts intended to minimize the harms associated with adverse health behaviors including fatal overdose and the transmission of bloodborne pathogens.

MHRI was founded by Livia Cox and Nick Wells, two EMTS working in Middlesex County, Connecticut. As EMTs, Cox and Wells began to see many of the same people over and over again in response to calls involving accidental overdoses. Although their position enabled them to provide care to these patients after the fact, the pair felt as though more could be done to prevent accidental overdoses from occurring in the first place. They were able to see these people outside the context of an emergency situation as individuals with complex lives and multi-faceted needs. Thus, in 2019, they established MHRI with the goal of bringing a sense of dignity and humanity to the overdose response system as well as reducing overdose fatalities and improving prevention measures.

MHRI maintains partnerships with AIDS Connecticut, the Clinton Foundation, the Connecticut Harm Reduction Alliance, Gilead Community Services, the Middletown Commission on the Arts, the Middletown Health Department, the Root Center for Advanced Recovery, and Wesleyan University.