Meet Phillip Tashash | Founder & Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Phillip Tashash and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Phillip, how does your business help the community?
The North Texas Harm Reduction Alliance is built to find a multifaceted approach to decrease harm caused by substance abuse. We do this by first conducting outreach into the community to discuss ways to best understand what harm reduction policies would look life for a North Texan. We find that when we listen to our community we can best build a program that best suited for the social, political, and unique needs of a area. We are also charged with building and maintain a standard of opioid overdose care. It’s a lot like CPR but for overdoses. Our hope is that by teaching our community how to respond to an overdose we can not only help save a life but create an opportunity to foster treatment for that individual and bring him/her back into her loving family. Along with that comes our harm reduction programs like distributing Narcan. Right now we’re working with community partners to support the legalization of fentanyl testing strips and clean syringes. Lastly, we want to understand how all of these approaches effect our loved North Texas community. So we are committing to research not only to help the world better understand harm reduction methods but also here at home where we can employ research based best practices. I believe that this model is not only going to be impactful for our community, but if done right we hope that other can use what we’ve built to bring this life changing program into other communities to save countless lives that would have been otherwise lost to the relentless war on drugs.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am a veteran of the United States Air Force where I served four years at Holloman AFB, NM. I was deployed to Kandahar Afghanistan for about 6 months away from my friends, family just giving all I can to support our country. My roots to joint he Air Force was a sense of duty to help those who need it the most. During my time I was recognized for a project I created for our unit that made some news (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIQw3vYmm08). I very much enjoyed my time in the Air Force building a community of working hard and crating life long friends I’d rather call family. I really believe that this is where my love for helping really began and flourished. I was honorably discharged from the Air Force after serving faithfully for four years with a dream to become a nurse. Having control over my education has allowed me to focus in on the populations of people I’d live to effect. Now, granted the opportunity to build this nonprofit to decrease the harm caused by substance abuse I really believe I can bring more love and good into our community.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Fort Worth is slept on as a city! For anybody that has not gone to the Fort Worth Zoo is missing out on a really fun day filled with interesting animals you’d never see otherwise but a fun and exciting atmosphere that I’ve never really gotten from other zoos. It’s just a good friend or family spot. Then I’d recommend going to down town Fort Worth where you get to walk down the area, grab a coffee and jump in and out of the small shops that are filled with unique little treats to bring home after a fun vacation. You can hop on the train up to Grapevine where the train drops you off right onto the main street filled with people, food, and shopping (who doesn’t love that). Lastly, I cannot recommend the Dallas Farmers Market enough! I love supporting our local farmers directly, you get better tasting and often unique foods. And you cannot go without tryin the macarons- but that’s probably a bit bias of me!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Ashlie Seale, a professor at Texas Christian University has been instrumental at helping me achieve this. In fact, it was me and her in her office for maybe 4 hours with a piece of paper and a pen jotting off ideas. She’s just as passionate about this project as I am. Her commitment to not only her community, but the patients she serves every day as a Psych NP has been nothing but relentless.

I’d also like to do a shoutout to the police officers, fire fighters, EMS, and all other first responders for the amazing work that they do everyday to help support bringing the end to harm caused by substance abuse. They are truly the first step to recovery for a lot of people needing substance abuse help and without these hard working people my job would be practically impossible.

Website: EndTheHarm.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ntharmreduction/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NTHarmReduction

Other: I recommend going to our Our Mission page where you can learn about our objectives, what harm reduction brings to Texas, and our LIVE impact statement updated to show our real time effects in our community. We also have a page that is tracking the Texas 88th Legislation effecting harm reduction in Texas.