Dr. Andrea Lopez has been awarded a $375K grant by the Maryland Department of Health through the CDC Public Health Crisis Response funds to conduct a regional ethnographic assessment from the perspective of people who use drugs about their access to harm reduction services, the service gaps they experience, barriers and facilitators to accessing these services, and potential regional capacity for the expansion of harm reduction interventions such as syringe service and overdose prevention programs. The ethnographic project has a strong community-based participatory component and has the broader aim of developing local capacity for harm reduction interventions and involving people with lived experience in every aspect of assessment activities in order to establish sustainable local programming to address the overdose epidemic in Maryland. The assessment will take place in Calvert County, Charles County, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, and St. Mary’s County.