The Northern Nevada Harm Reduction Alliance is a collaboration between people with lived/living experience, harm reduction, treatment, outreach, and public health practitioners and researchers. NNHRA is a nonprofit organization, and its purpose is to promote and foster respect, acceptance, and dignity for people who use drugs and sex workers by recognizing the inherent worth and value of each individual person, adding to the community essence, shifting the narrative community-wide. 

Meet the Team

  • Kat Atomik

    KNOWLEGEABLE USERS ADVISORY LEAGUE CHAIR

    advisory@nnvhra.org

    This is Kat Atomik, NNHRA Board Chairperson for the Advisory Committee and Director of KUAL. She has dedicated her efforts to advocating for positive policy reform and have been a vocal supporter of change within her communities. But, unfortunately, she is awful at speaking in 3rd person& has a hard time boasting about her accomplishments. 

    She was initially focused on improving life on a planetary scale, but she realized that the most effective way to improve the world is possibly by first healing its inhabitants. It would certainly require a huge force of physical prowess to make any impact in the damaged cases we have inherited from our predecessors. Her activism story is rooted in a personal experience that highlighted the importance of information and empowerment.

    Her best friend returned from a semester abroad in the exchange student program with a secret Spanish boyfriend, a secret hidden tattoo, and another secret- deeper than the skin, that even she didn’t know about…. 

     Months passed, Boyfriend dumped, Tattoo discovered. Then a Dirtbike accident announced our friend needed type O blood- 4 of us went to the bank. Kat believed her BFF had such an easy time with everything because God loved her. She was able to donate the max-Kat barely donated a vial!!

    One very dry Oatmeal raisin cookie later & the tech rushed back into the recovery room- asking the rest of us to clear out & were Kai’s parents reachable atm? She had barely survived a Hep A contraction when she was only 7yo, She couldn't party, had to do regular cleanses to stay healthy and strong. 

    There was no wiggle room or time to hope for transplant. It felt like we’d barely been informed that her tattoo came with the Hep C virus- the health regulations in other countries were VERY slow to establish the protective protocol that saves countless lives daily. There was nothing we could do now & She passed, at 15yo. 

    This is where Kat first recognized the need to inform humans to EMPOWER humans. You leave a demographic ignorant or oblivious to risks and dangers is to feed us to the beast voluntarily. 

    Many exploits followed this, but this singular situation, as painful as it often is- prompted her state of consciousness to elevate- and for her to live life with a present& invested psyche.

  • Lisa Lee, DrPH, PRSS-S, CPRSS

    FERAL GOBLIN CUSTODIAN OF RECORDS (TREASURER)

    admin@nnvhra.org

    Dr. Lisa “Turtle” Lee has been in recovery from chaotic heroin use and homelessness since 2002. She is a former methadone patient and consumer of harm reduction outreach services. Lisa has worked in the healthcare field since 2004 in a variety of positions in a variety of clinical and nonclinical settings and is a certified peer recovery support specialist (CPRSS) and supervisor. At heart, she is an implementer and has enjoyed implementing new programs in a variety of settings including an opioid treatment program, mobile outreach, recovery community organization, the jail, emergency departments, and a county agency. She has served on a variety of state boards and enjoys serving on three nonprofit boards. Her graduate research, for an MA in anthropology, focused on the ways in which harm reduction as a counter discourse helped to frame and maintain the radically inclusive social space of a local syringe services program for people marginalized and excluded elsewhere. She holds doctorate in public health (DrPH) which she pursued to have an opportunity to get people with lived/living experience at the tables where decisions are being made about our lives and believes whole-heartedly, “nothing about us, without us.” Her favorite role is being a mom.

NNHRA Founding Board

Left to right: Elyse Monroy-Marsala (former president), Ezra Rose (former president), Lisa Lee (treasurer), Madalyn Larson (former secretary)


(Copyright David Calvert/The Nevada Independent, 2023)

The NNHRA board members come from a variety of personal and professional backgrounds. What ties us all together is our passion for loving people who use drugs and our dedication to harm reduction strategies as an approach to saving lives, fighting stigma, and empowering people to make decisions about their health and wellness.