Needle Safety Program
This year we have been developing our relationships with our businesses during board outreach clean ups!
Details
July 2, 2019
Flora Tempel
Categories
Discovery Series
We developed a plan to take the ‘Clean and Safe’ focused Discovery Series scheduled for April, to our businesses after meeting with Mark Solomon, Crime Prevention Coordinator of South & Southwest Precincts. During our initial conversation asking Mark to come be a speaker for our event, he asked what audience we wanted to reach with this effort, and how successful had we been with turnout, hosting other educational events. We identified our local business owners as our audience, and that we had a hard time finding an audience for our events, always hosted during prime business hours. Mark suggested we take the safety ideas to our businesses instead, and he would be available to go with us. This thinking helped us reshape our Discovery Series thinking, in general, inspiring us to take them to our audience and not expect our audience to come to us, especially when their business is open. Thank you Mark!
For our April Discovery Series event, we decided to combine these two efforts to create a place to take the Discovery Series to our businesses.
Mark also connected us with Tracy Cramer, the Sharps Collection Outreach Coordinator with Seattle Public Utilities, to explore the idea of providing our businesses with sharps containers as a part of this redesigned Discovery Series. The Hub Alliance is now the first ‘Beta’ neighborhood group working with Tracy in the new, City sponsored, Sharps Collection program. In partnership with Tracy and Seattle Public Utilities, the Mt. Baker Hub Alliance will train the business owners and managers to safely handle and dispose of sharps. The businesses will then be able to empty their sharps containers into the large sharps disposal container on Winthrop Ave. and Cheasty Boulevard. In April, we began conducting outreach with the first businesses that will be involved in this project, and will continue rolling out of this program in scheduled business outreach meetings this summer and fall.
We are exploring the expansion of this beta program to the businesses in our area. We are proud to continue working toward a cleaner and safer environment for our businesses, residents, and visitors.