Jean-Paul Grund is the Executive Director of the Stop Overdose Now Foundation and project leader of the proposed project. Combining his recent academic interest in new psychoactive substances (NPS or “legal highs”), online drug commerce and the influence of technology on drug markets with his concerns about the opioid overdose crisis brought Jean-Paul to formulate this approach. As the founding director of the International Harm Reduction Development program of the Open Society Institute and Technical Advisor at UNAIDS, Jean-Paul promoted the first HIV prevention and harm reduction responses to the syndemic of drug injecting, infectious diseases and social upheaval in Central Europe, Russia and the Newly Independent States.

Professor Pat O’Hare, Executive Director of HIT in Liverpool, UK, started working in the drug field in the mid-1980s when he became Drug Education Coordinator for Sefton on Merseyside and then Director of the Mersey Drug Training and Information Centre (later renamed HIT) in Liverpool. In 1989 he founded the International Journal of Drug Policy and was editor from 1992 – 2000. He initiated the First International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm in 1990. He was the founding Executive Director of the International Harm Reduction Association (now known as Harm Reduction International) from 1996 until he stepped down in 2004. During this time he was involved in high-level advocacy globally on drug policy and HIV prevention. His role also included strategic planning, organisational development, programme implementation, and assessment and review of programmes/operational procedures and processes.

Peter Blanken graduated as a social psychologist (MSc) and received his PhD at the medical faculty of the University of Amsterdam. Since 2002 he is a senior researcher at the Parnassia Addiction Research Center of Brijder Addiction Treatment (PARC; The Hague, NL), conducting studies of treatment needs of and new pharmacotherapeutic treatment options for people with crack-cocaine use disorder in the Netherlands” and the effectiveness of financial incentives to improve medication adherence in patients with a psychotic disorder and comorbid substance abuse”. Currently he is involved in evaluations of treatment processes, the development of the Dutch “Multidisciplinary Guideline for treatment of patients with substance use disorder, including cannabis, cocaine, (meth)amphetamines, ecstasy, GHB, and benzodiazepines” and in a 4-year cohort study into young people’s addiction trajectories and profiles.

Les Pappas is the President & Creative Director of Better World Advertising in San Francisco. Les established Better World Advertising in 1996 and has been creating social marketing campaigns for 35 years. As President and Creative Director, Les is involved in every aspect of the social marketing process, from developing messages to overseeing campaign implementation and evaluation. Les believes that social marketing is a limitless force for helping people and creating a stronger, healthier society. Prior to founding BWA, Les served as the Director of Prevention Campaigns for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation for ten years. His campaigns were featured in numerous national and international media outlets including CNN and Time Magazine.

Luke Slater is a PhD candidate in the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, where he works with big data in a medical context. He is one of the owners of TripSit.me, a large online harm reduction community, providing live chat-based support for drug users, as well as many online resources with up-to-date HR information on recreational drugs, with a focus on NPS. Luke hopes to harness modern technology to catch up to the ways people are talking about and using drugs today. This involves evolving current approaches with new technology, so that they are easily accessible in all necessary environments, and developing new reactive approaches to make use of the increasing amount of data we have from people who use drugs online.

Nigel Brunsdon is a UK based harm reduction advocate with a special interest in safer injecting and drug consumption spaces. He spends most of his work life designing websites for himself (nigelbrunsdon.com, injectingadvice.com, harmreduction.tips) and others (safeshapesif.com, vocal-ny.org etc). He can normally be found hiding behind a camera taking photos of people who inspire him to be a better person.