Director of Education
Academy of Perinatal Harm Reduction
Disclosure: I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Joelle Puccio, BSN, RN is a co-founder of and Director of Education for the Academy of Perinatal Harm Reduction, whose mission is to improve the lives of pregnant and parenting people who use substances. They are a registered nurse with 17 years of experience in Perinatal and Neonatal Intensive Care. They worked for 7 years as the Director of Women’s Services for the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance, a peer run syringe services program in Seattle, WA, and served on the Board of Directors for 4 years. They have been invited to speak at conferences convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Academy of Neonatal Nurses (ANN), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and more. They currently travel the country in their RV with their partner and 2 cats as a travel nurse, in order to learn about the experience of families affected by perinatal substance use and pregnancy criminalization in varying geographic areas. Their main interest is the intersection of drug user rights and feminism. They became passionate about advocating for people who use drugs after realizing that everything they had been taught about drugs from childhood through nursing school was wrong.