The Jarman Centre
The Jarman Centre, a facility of the Teaching PCT, located on James Street Blackburn was one of the first Health Promotion Units in England to respond to the public health challenges of HIV / AIDS. Under the direction of Peter Cash, the Jarman Centre was at the forefront of innovative approaches to combat the spread of HIV infections. It promoted primary and secondary prevention initiatives in the field of sexual health and substance misuse; both recognised as key transmission routes for HIV and other blood borne viruses such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Through primary prevention initiatives the Jarman Centre established comprehensive training programmes aimed at improving the awareness and education of public and voluntary sector workers around substance misuse and sexual health issues which affect individuals and communities. It also established effective education and prevention programmes with service users, including the development of comprehensive harm reduction services and client education interventions. These continue to this day,and are continually reviewed and assessed to ensure that current projects are relevant to the health needs of the community.
Examples of current work include: outreach initiatives to provide hepatitis B vaccination to the homeless, engagement with injectors of performance enhancing drugs to raise awareness of the many potentially serious health and social consequences of misuse and the development of an interactive distance learning resource to raise awareness of primary and secondary prevention issues in relation to hepatitis C.
Another important aspect of Jarman Centre work is inter-agency collaboration with other key services across Blackburn with Darwen and East Lancashire. In this regard the Jarman Centre has over recent years organised and delivered a range of seminars and conferences covering issues such as effective responses to cannabis use, vascular care of injecting drug users, HIV prevention in the community whilst also developing inter agency harm reduction strategies to tackle substance misuse across Blackburn with Darwen and east Lancashire. The Jarman Centre has recently been commissioned to provide a comprehensive harm reduction service for injecting drug users based at Burnley House, Westgate, Burnley. This mirrors the harm reduction service operating from the Jarman Centre in Blackburn. All the pharmacy based needle exchange programmes across Blackburn with Darwen and East Lancashire are co-ordinated by the Jarman Centre.
Read more about this topic: Blackburn With Darwen Teaching Primary Care Trust
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