Harm Minimisation

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Harmless fun?

Health Promotion & Harm Minimisation

 

Harm minimisation is a phrase you might hear, or read in brochures, but what does it mean?

 

First let's think about harm:  Harms are described by health promoters as negative impacts on the health or wellbeing of a person.

Harms might be physical, social, financial, or affect your educational or workplace abilities.   For example, the harms associated with alcohol use could be things like: having a hangover, vomiting, crashing the car, messing up a relationship, using too much of your money to pay for alcohol, aggression or violence, memory loss, losing personal possessions, etc.

 

If you've experienced any of the above because of alcohol, then you"ve experienced "Alcohol-related harm".

 

Ok, so that's harm.  Now, what's minimisation?

Minimisation simply means keeping something as small as possible.  So the goal of harm minimisation is to keep the amount of harm as small as possible. 

 

Harm minimisation doesn't focus on moral considerations of what is "right or wrong" but rather on what's harmful or not harmful.  It also considers whether any identified harm impacts on an individual or society, and whether the harm is major or minor. 

 

Harm minimisation acknowledges that people make their own choices, so it attempts to find ways to influence people's behaviour so they will make choices which will result in the least harm. 

 

Reference

Laurenson, C.  (2004) Developing a National Drugs Policy.  In Public Health Action: Te Pa Harakeke Autumn Edition (pp14, 15).  NZ Ministry of Health.