Recent advances in the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection provide the possibility of eliminating HCV as a public health threat. This focus on HCV elimination through treatment, however, is also dri...
Authors: Annie Madden, Max Hopwood, Joanne Neale and Carla Treloar
Despite the integration of peer workers into harm reduction services, there is little documentation regarding the experience of this integration or of models in which peers are fully integrated as members of h...
Authors: Paula Tookey, Kate Mason, Jennifer Broad, Marty Behm, Lise Bondy and Jeff Powis
There are few women-centered treatment programs for substance use disorder. We therefore undertook an exploratory study to better understand the treatment experience, barriers, and facilitators of mothers with...
Authors: Natasha Elms, Kendra Link, Adam Newman and Susan B. Brogly
Hepatitis C (HCV) is a global public health concern. There is a global prevalence of 15% among the world’s prisoner population, suggesting the need for priority HCV treatment among this population group. New h...
Authors: Lise Lafferty, T. Cameron Wild, Jake Rance and Carla Treloar
Public health leadership in England has taken a distinctive international stance by identifying the potential public health benefit of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation. This includes the development of a gro...
People who inject drugs (PWID) are at an increased risk of wound botulism, a potentially fatal acute paralytic illness. During the first 6 months of 2015, a large outbreak of wound botulism was confirmed among...
Authors: Kirsten M. A. Trayner, Amanda Weir, Andrew McAuley, Gauri Godbole, Corinne Amar, Kathie Grant, Gillian Penrice and Kirsty Roy
People who use drugs have a significantly higher prevalence of chronic non-cancer pain compared to the general population, yet little is known about how various policy, economic, physical, and social environme...
Authors: Pauline Voon, Alissa M. Greer, Ashraf Amlani, Cheri Newman, Charlene Burmeister and Jane A. Buxton
The opioid crisis remains a major public health issue in the US and beyond. Despite rapid rises in fentanyl-related mortality nationally, little is known about the role of fentanyl in the occurrence of non-fat...
Authors: Ju Nyeong Park, Brian W. Weir, Sean T. Allen, Patrick Chaulk and Susan G. Sherman
Understanding the role that flavors play in the population’s use of e-cigarettes and the impact that flavored e-cigarette products have on the population’s use of more harmful tobacco products, like convention...
Authors: Christopher Russell, Neil McKeganey, Tiffany Dickson and Mitchell Nides
We have little understanding of how vapers use e-cigarettes beyond cessation. E-cigarettes may have a role to play in reducing the health-related harms of tobacco smoking, through not only assisting smoking ce...
Authors: Caitlin Notley, Emma Ward, Lynne Dawkins and Richard Holland
The mainstream tobacco field in the USA tends to situate youth as passive, particularly in terms of their susceptibility to industry manipulation and peer pressure. However, failing to acknowledge youths’ agen...
Authors: Tamar M. J. Antin, Geoffrey Hunt and Emile Sanders
A tenth of all people who inject drugs in Kenya are women, yet their social contexts and experiences remain poorly understood. This paper reports how multiple forms of stigma are experienced by women who injec...
Authors: Gitau Mburu, Sylvia Ayon, Alexander C. Tsai, James Ndimbii, Bangyuan Wang, Steffanie Strathdee and Janet Seeley
Mexico recently enacted drug policy reform to decriminalize possession of small amounts of illicit drugs and mandated that police refer identified substance users to drug treatment. However, the economic impli...
Authors: Jose Luis Burgos, Javier A. Cepeda, James G. Kahn, Maria Luisa Mittal, Emilio Meza, Raúl Rafael Palacios Lazos, Psyché Calderón Vargas, Peter Vickerman, Steffanie A. Strathdee and Natasha K. Martin
A large body of research has investigated the rise of injection drug use and HIV transmission in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez (CJ). However, little is known about the dynamics of injecting in Hermosillo. This stu...
Authors: Angelica Ospina-Escobar, Carlos Magis-Rodríguez, Fatima Juárez, Dan Werb, Sergio Bautista Arredondo, Rubén Carreón, María Elena Ramos and Steffanie Strathdee
Internationally, overdose is the primary cause of death among people injecting drugs. However, since 2001, heroin-related overdose deaths in the United States (US) have risen sixfold, paralleled by a rise in t...
Authors: Sarah G. Mars, Jeff Ondocsin and Daniel Ciccarone
Current estimates suggest that 15% of all prisoners worldwide are chronically infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), and this number is even higher in regions with high rates of injecting drug use. Althoug...
Authors: Rob Bielen, Samya R. Stumo, Rachel Halford, Klára Werling, Tatjana Reic, Heino Stöver, Geert Robaeys and Jeffrey V. Lazarus
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is one of the major public health problems both in developed and developing countries. Prison represents a high-risk environment for prisoners, in that it is characterized by high-risk ...
Authors: Masoud Behzadifar, Hasan Abolghasem Gorji, Aziz Rezapour and Nicola Luigi Bragazzi
Skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among people who inject drugs (PWID). International data indicate up to one third of PWID have experienced an SSTI within ...
Authors: M. Harris, R. Brathwaite, Catherine R. McGowan, D. Ciccarone, G. Gilchrist, M. McCusker, K. O’Brien, J. Dunn, J. Scott and V. Hope
Women’s participation in, and harm from gambling, is steadily increasing. There has been very limited research to investigate how gambling behaviour, product preferences, and perceptions of gambling harm may v...
Authors: Simone McCarthy, Samantha L. Thomas, Melanie Randle, Amy Bestman, Hannah Pitt, Sean Cowlishaw and Mike Daube
Before the 1980s in the USA, smokeless tobacco carried no health warnings, was not judged to cause disease, and was a declining practice. In 1986, the federal government passed legislation requiring rotating w...
Recent deaths of young Australian music festival attendees from ‘party-drug’ overdoses have sparked debate about the effectiveness of drug policies. Australia is widely lauded for its harm minimisation approac...
Harm reduction has been at the forefront of the response to the opioid overdose public health emergency in British Columbia (BC). The unprecedented number of opioid overdose deaths in the province calls for an...
Authors: Silvina C. Mema, Chloe Sage, Serge Popoff, Jessica Bridgeman, Deanne Taylor and Trevor Corneil
To reduce fatal drug overdoses, two approaches many states have followed is to pass laws expanding naloxone access and Good Samaritan protections for lay persons with high likelihood to respond to an opioid ov...
Authors: Dennis P. Watson, Bradley Ray, Lisa Robison, Philip Huynh, Emily Sightes, La Shea Walker, Krista Brucker and Joan Duwve
Previous research has shown that government and industry discussions of gambling may focus on personal responsibility for gambling harm. In Australia, these discussions have largely excluded people with lived ...
Authors: Helen E. Miller, Samantha L. Thomas and Priscilla Robinson
Methamphetamine is one of the most widely used illicit drugs in several Southeast Asian countries, including the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR). The purpose of this study was to examine the socio-cultu...
Authors: Vanphanom Sychareun, Bangone Santavasy, Niramonh Chanlivong, Andrea Fischer, Nicholas Thomson, Robert Power and Jo Durham
Harmful gambling has been identified as an important public health issue that affects individuals, families and the broader community. One gambling product, electronic gambling machines (EGMs), has been associ...
Authors: Amy Bestman, Samantha L. Thomas, Melanie Randle, Hannah Pitt and Mike Daube
Street-involved youth who use illicit drugs are at high risk for health-related harms; however, the profile of youth at greatest risk of hospitalization has not been well described. We sought to characterize h...
Authors: Derek C. Chang, Launette Rieb, Ekaterina Nosova, Yang Liu, Thomas Kerr and Kora DeBeck
In New Zealand, a public health programme on gambling policy development is part of a national gambling harm reduction and prevention strategy mandated by the Gambling Act 2003. Funded by the Ministry of Health, ...
Authors: Komathi Kolandai-Matchett, Jason Landon, Maria Bellringer and Max Abbott
Despite increasing contraceptive availability, unintended pregnancy remains a global problem. Developing strategies to reverse this trend and increasing occurrence of withdrawal syndrome among newborn children...
Authors: Anneli Uusküla, Mait Raag, Sigrid Vorobjov and Don Des Jarlais
Peer outreach harm reduction initiatives are being developed with and for people who use drugs in Dakar, Senegal. This is in response to growing injecting drug use across the West Africa region and linked emer...
Authors: Camille May Stengel, Famara Mane, Andrew Guise, Magath Pouye, Monika Sigrist and Tim Rhodes
Lack of information on the HIV epidemic among men who inject drugs (MWID) in northwestern Vietnam, a remote area, may hamper national efforts to control the disease. We examined HIV prevalence, needle–syringe ...
Authors: Van T. Nghiem, Thanh C. Bui, Patrick P. Nadol, Son H. Phan, Binh T. Kieu, Ryan Kling and Theodore M. Hammett
Synthetic opioid overdose mortality among young adults has risen more than 300% in the USA since 2013, primarily due to the contamination of heroin and other drugs with illicitly manufactured fentanyl. Rapid t...
Authors: Maxwell S. Krieger, Jesse L. Yedinak, Jane A. Buxton, Mark Lysyshyn, Edward Bernstein, Josiah D. Rich, Traci C. Green, Scott E. Hadland and Brandon D. L. Marshall
Needle and syringe program (NSP) service delivery models encompass fixed sites, mobile services, vending machines, pharmacies, peer NSPs, street outreach, and inter-organizational agreements to add NSP service...
Deadly Liver Mob (DLM) is a peer-driven, incentivised health promotion program aimed at increasing understanding of hepatitis C, promoting harm reduction in relation to injecting drug use, and linking particip...
Authors: Carla Treloar, Max Hopwood, Elena Cama, Veronica Saunders, L. Clair Jackson, Melinda Walker, Catriona Ooi, Ashley Ubrihien and James Ward
Pharmacists’ role in harm reduction is expanding in many states, yet there are limited data on pharmacists’ willingness to participate in harm reduction activities. This study assessed community pharmacists’ w...
Authors: Amie Goodin, Amanda Fallin-Bennett, Traci Green and Patricia R. Freeman
When shared by people who inject drugs, needles and syringes with different dead space may affect the probability of HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission differently.
Authors: William A. Zule, Poonam G. Pande, David Otiashvili, Georgiy V. Bobashev, Samuel R. Friedman, V. Anna Gyarmathy and Don C. Des Jarlais
The main purpose of the research was to evaluate the implementation of the drug checking service in Slovenia and to obtain the opinion of users included in harm reduction programmes for high-risk drug users an...
Drug checking is a harm reduction strategy which allows users to check the content and purity of illicit drugs. Although drug checking has been trialled internationally, with demonstrated value as a harm reduc...
Authors: Niamh Day, Joshua Criss, Benjamin Griffiths, Shireen Kaur Gujral, Franklin John-Leader, Jennifer Johnston and Sabrina Pit
The distribution of take-home naloxone (THN) kits has been an important strategy in reducing overdose fatalities among people who use drugs. However, little is known about the use of THN among youth who are st...
Authors: Julia Goldman-Hasbun, Kora DeBeck, Jane A. Buxton, Ekaterina Nosova, Evan Wood and Thomas Kerr
Opioid agonist therapy has been widely used to reduce harms among individuals with opioid use disorder but its effectiveness has not been evaluated in the Middle East North African (MENA) region. This study ai...
Authors: Ali Ghaddar, Zeinab Abbas and Ramzi Haddad
North America is currently experiencing an overdose epidemic due to a significant increase of fentanyl-adulterated opioids and related analogs. Multiple jurisdictions have declared a public health emergency gi...
Authors: Geoff Bardwell, Alexandra B. Collins, Ryan McNeil and Jade Boyd
Peer support programmes use individuals with specific experiences to improve engagement and outcomes among new clients. However, the skills and techniques used to achieve this engagement have not been mapped. ...
Authors: Jennifer MacLellan, Julian Surey, Ibrahim Abubakar, Helen R. Stagg and Jenevieve Mannell
The ability to cure hepatitis C viral infection, with specific reference to the prisoner population and the prison environment, will be challenged, even if opiate replacement therapy is concurrently offered, a...
Authors: Ben Harkness, Michael Levy, Ruth Evans and Jillian Wenke
Prison inmates face a ten times increased risk of experiencing a fatal drug overdose during their first 2 weeks upon release than their non-incarcerated counterparts. Naloxone, the antidote to an opioid overdo...
Authors: Aase Grønlien Petterson and Desiree Madah-Amiri
Often, research takes place on underserved populations rather than with underserved populations. This approach can further isolate and stigmatize groups that are already made marginalized. What Goes Around is ...
Authors: Chelsea Jalloh, Shohan Illsley, John Wylie, Paula Migliardi, Ethan West, Debbie Stewart and Javier Mignone
Mexico’s 2009 “narcomenudeo reform” decriminalized small amounts of drugs, shifting some drug law enforcement to the states and mandating drug treatment diversion instead of incarceration. Data from Tijuana su...
Authors: J. Arredondo, S. A. Strathdee, J. Cepeda, D. Abramovitz, I. Artamonova, E. Clairgue, E. Bustamante, M. L. Mittal, T. Rocha, A. Bañuelos, H. O. Olivarria, M. Morales, G. Rangel, C. Magis and L. Beletsky
