Digital Stories
What is Digital Storytelling (DST)?
What is digital storytelling (DST)?
DST combines personal narratives, multimedia, and technology to amplify the lived experience of the storyteller. It utilizes digital tools such as images, photography, videos, and music to tell someones story, creating an engaging and impactful format. DST has a profound effect on both the storyteller and their audiences as well as key stakeholders by fostering understanding through this form of personalized storytelling.
What is a Safer Supply Program (SSP)?
Safer Supply Programs provide a prescription of pharmaceutical opioids to individuals with a opioid use disorder as an alternative to the toxic unregulated drug supply in Canada. Since 2016, the toxic drug supply has lead to over 51,000 deaths in Canada. In addition to the prescription of opioids, Wraparound Services are also provided to meet the health and social service needs of those enrolled in the program. SSPs are one option for those at-risk of significant opioid-related harms, including overdose and death.
Who are the Storytellers?
The storytellers are individuals who were receiving healthcare services from a SSP and engaged in the DST process to highlight the impact of the program in their lives.
The original goal for the DST was to highlight the positive impact of the program; how it saved lives and the positive relationship that existed amongst staff and those being served by the program. However, during the planning of the digital stories it was announced that funding would not be extended past March 31, 2025.
Even with the closing of the program, the storytellers decided to continue to share their thoughts and feelings. The digital stories below are emotional testaments to the life saving role of Safer Supply Programs to directly address the current impact of toxic and unregulated drug supply in Canada.
What are the objectives of DST and the Safer Supply Program?
The objectives of this DST project were to 1) amplify the voices of those directly impacted by the toxic drug supply, the individuals enrolled in the SSP, 2) act as an advocacy tool to put a voice and/or face to statistics, and 3) to highlight current evidence-based research that supports the scaling up the program not closing the program.
Digital Stories: The Impact of the Safer Supply Program
Storytellers, Program Staff and the Research Team at the public launch of Digital Stories: The impact of the Safer Supply Program (March 19, 2025)
