Word.ws English Dictionary

harm reduction

harm reduction noun: a range of public health policies designed to lessen the negative social or physical consequences associated with various human behaviors, both legal and illegal.

Noun

harm reduction (uncountable)

  1. A range of public health policies designed to lessen the negative social or physical consequences associated with various human behaviors, both legal and illegal.
    • Many harm reduction groups and drug policy experts question the long-term efficacy of scheduling xylazine.2023 April 20, Jan Hoffman, “The Fight Over a Drug That Is Great for Horses but Horrific for Humans”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Questions about harm reduction

What does harm reduction mean?
Harm reduction means a range of public health policies designed to lessen the negative social or physical consequences associated with various human behaviors, both legal and illegal.
What part of speech is harm reduction?
Harm reduction is a noun.

Words near harm reduction in the dictionary

  1. Harlyn
  2. harm
  3. harm a fly
  4. harm a hair on someone's head
  5. harm principle
  6. harm reduction
  7. harm's way
  8. harmability
  9. harmable
  10. Harmachis
  11. Harmakhis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: harm reduction (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “harm reduction.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/harm_reduction. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.