Let the girls know, “you can come here”: qualitative experiences with harm reduction and health services among women who use drugs in Chicago

of losing parental custody due to substance use [13].In addition, stigma against WWUD, who are viewed as "doubly deviant" (i.e.transgressing conventional feminine gender roles and breaking the law through substance use), [9] may lead to decreased utilization of services due to fear of judgement and alienation.The predominantly male clientele at syringe service programs and experiences of gender-based violence in substance use treatment settings may traumatize and deter women from presenting for care [14,15].Finally, logistical challenges including transportation and operational hours at sites of healthcare pose additional obstacles [10].Implementation studies have examined interventions specifically designed to promote the health of WWUD in various settings, including addiction treatment clinics, [16, 17] residential treatment programs, [18] community centers, [1,19] and syringe service programs [3,14,20].Pilot studies have shown that interventions tailored to WWUD may yield health benefits and make more accessible those harm reduction and healthcare services which purport to be "low-threshold" (i.e.accessible with minimal barriers to entry) to help overcome barriers to access [2,3,16,18,19,21].While multiple studies have queried WWUD around barriers to accessing harm reduction Harm Reduction