After losing two friends and later my mother to overdose, I stopped thinking about awareness and started thinking about access.
This work did not begin in a studio. It began with loss.
Over several years, I lost two close friends and later my mother to overdose. Their deaths changed the way I thought about harm reduction and left me asking a simple question:
What if the tools needed to save a life were already there when an emergency happened?
"Access does not guarantee presence in the moment of crisis."
Naloxone can reverse an opioid overdose in minutes. While it has become easier to access through pharmacies and community programs, it is often not available in the places where overdoses occur.
A naloxone kit sitting on a pharmacy shelf cannot help someone overdosing in a bar, music venue, or community space. The tools need to be present in the moment they are needed.
Harm Reduction Boxes grew from that realization. What started as a personal response to loss became an effort to place life saving resources directly into the spaces where people gather.
The project began as a personal act of mourning and became a public health intervention rooted in visibility, access, and community care.
Before the boxes, there was a campaign. The Come Clean project began as a series of posters and coasters designed to start conversations about opioid use without shame. That work taught me something important: awareness matters, but awareness alone does not save lives. The next step was creating something people could use in an emergency.
Graphic Design II · CCA
Poster — Destigmatize Opioid Abuse
Coaster 01 — Opioid abuse is not disgraceful
Coaster 02 — Opioid abuse is a disorder. Let's Chat.
Thesis Work · CCA MDes
Prototype specs — 10"×20" box with neon sign design
Very first prototype — built at home
First finished wooden box — CCA workshop
Custom instruction card — Peel · Place · Press
Narcan badge — recreated for box familiarity
Most overdoses do not happen in hospitals. They happen in bars, music venues, galleries, and other social spaces where people gather.
In many overdose emergencies, bystanders are the first people on the scene. But knowing naloxone exists is different from having it within reach when seconds matter.
The time to respond is short. When people do not have the tools or confidence to act, lives can be lost before help arrives.
That gap between access and presence became the focus of this project.
More than 100,000 people die from drug overdoses each year in the United States. While recent numbers show progress, the crisis remains urgent.
The question was not whether naloxone works. The question was how to make sure it is present when it is needed.
Harm Reduction Boxes are hand built enclosures that contain naloxone, fentanyl test strips, and simple overdose response instructions. They are installed directly in bars, music venues, galleries, and community spaces where immediate access can make a difference.
Two doses per box. Naloxone is a safe medication that can reverse an opioid overdose and give someone a second chance at life.
A simple tool that helps people identify fentanyl before use. Prevention is just as important as response.
A simple three step instruction card designed to help someone act quickly and confidently during an overdose emergency.
Assembled by hand and installed at nightlife establishments across San Francisco — wherever the chance of an opioid overdose inside or nearby is probable. Each box is placed in a highly visible common area where employees and patrons can interact with it conversationally, or in a worst-case scenario, use it to administer life-saving naloxone.
Bars, music venues, galleries, and community spaces · San Francisco, CA
