Berkeley Needle Exchange (N.E.E.D.)

Based in Berkeley, California, NEED is unique among needle exchange programs because we are a volunteer-based collective. We started in September 1990 by a group of HIV+ persons, people in recovery, and health activists as an underground program operating out of a baby carriage on the corner of Hearst & San Pablo Avenues.
Presently we field a staff of ten to fifteen volunteers at three sites per week in different Berkeley neighborhoods.

We operate from a blue van at three neighborhoods sites each week. We offer free, anonymous services in a client-centered manner, and we are dedicated to the prevention of infectious diseases and to improving the physical, spiritual and political health of drug users. We run a wound care clinic out of the back of our van on
Thursdays, which was founded in response to client input expressing an urgent need for on-site access to simple procedures, supplies and information which could prevent painful and debilitating hospital stays, limb loss or death.

Recently, we began an overdose prevention and education component to address the rising number of overdoses among injection drug users. All three of our sites offer free, anonymous Hepatitis A, B & C testing and (through a collaboration with the Berkeley Free Clinic) counseling and treatment if appropriate.

1. Preventing the spread of HIV, Hep C and other communicable diseases.