Kayla DeMong, PHR\u0027s associate executive director, will succeed Mercredi, who said he feels ready for a change.
Jason Mercredi, who served as executive director of Prairie Harm Reduction as Saskatchewan faced an unprecedented crisis of overdose deaths, is leaving the organization to take up a new post at the Metis Nation—Saskatchewan.
Mercredi at the construction site of Saskatchewan’s first supervised drug consumption site in 2019, before it opened in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.Friends and co-workers say Mercredi’s leadership changed how many Saskatchewan people think about drugs and the people who use them. He lobbied successfully for expanding harm reduction interventions to make drug use safer — like pipes, naloxone, and drug checking supplies — and has been a vocal proponent for removing the stigma from drug use.
He joined PHR nine years ago, when it was still called AIDS Saskatoon. In that time, it grew from a small non-profit to a nationally recognized leader in harm reduction, co-founding Canada’s national HIV testing day. Saskatchewan has the highest rates of HIV infection in the country. Mercredi’s big battle came when the consumption site was twice denied funding by Saskatchewan’s government as overdose rates climbed. The provincial coroner reported 270 confirmed and 172 suspected overdose deaths in 2021, a total of 442 — more than twice as many as 2019.Article content
He said DeMong is the right person to take the helm. She also began work at PHR about nine years ago and has been instrumental in creating PHR’s family-based programs. Mercredi will start work later this month as the homelessness manager for the MN—S, returning home to northern Saskatchewan to address homelessness in rural and northern settings.
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