Articles

Acceptability of prison-based take-home naloxone programmes among a cohort of incarcerated men with a history of regular injecting drug use

Take-home naloxone (THN) programmes are an evidence-based opioid overdose prevention initiative. Elevated opioid overdose risk following prison release means release from custody provides an ideal opportunity ...

Authors: Michael Curtis, Paul Dietze, Campbell Aitken, Amy Kirwan, Stuart A. Kinner, Tony Butler and Mark Stoové

Acceptance of pharmaceutical cannabis substitution by cannabis using patients with schizophrenia

Cannabis-smoking patients with a psychotic disorder have poorer disease outcomes than non-cannabis-smoking patients with poorest outcomes in patients smoking high-potency cannabis (HPC) containing high Δ9-tetr...

Authors: Jan van Amsterdam, Jojanneke Vervloet, Gerdien de Weert, Victor J. A. Buwalda, Anna E. Goudriaan and Wim van den Brink

Evaluation of a fentanyl drug checking service for clients of a supervised injection facility, Vancouver, Canada

British Columbia, Canada, is experiencing a public health emergency related to opioid overdoses driven by consumption of street drugs contaminated with illicitly manufactured fentanyl. This cross-sectional stu...

Authors: Mohammad Karamouzian, Carolyn Dohoo, Sara Forsting, Ryan McNeil, Thomas Kerr and Mark Lysyshyn

Problem gambling and psychological distress: a cross-national perspective on the mediating effect of consumer debt and debt problems among emerging adults

Severe economic difficulties are common among younger generations who currently have an easy access to consumer credit and payday loans in many Western countries. These accessible yet expensive short-term loan...

Authors: Atte Oksanen, Iina Savolainen, Anu Sirola and Markus Kaakinen

Feasibility of needle and syringe programs in Tajikistan distributing low dead space needles

In 2012, the World Health Organization recommended that needle and syringe programs offer their clients low dead space insulin syringes with permanently attached needles. However, in many countries, these syri...

Authors: William A. Zule, Alisher Latypov, David Otiashvili, Steffani Bangel and Georgiy V. Bobashev

A qualitative study of persons who inject drugs but who have never helped others with first injections: how their views on helping contrast with the views of persons who have helped with first injections, and implications for interventions

Transitioning from non-injection to injection drug use dramatically escalates health risks. Evidence suggests that people who inject drugs (PWID) help in a majority of others’ first injections, yet these helpe...

Authors: David M. Barnes, Don C. Des Jarlais, Margaret Wolff, Jonathan Feelemyer and Susan Tross

Beyond cure: patient reported outcomes of hepatitis C treatment among people who inject drugs in Australia

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

From client to co-worker: a case study of the transition to peer work within a multi-disciplinary hepatitis c treatment team in Toronto, Canada

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

Need for women-centered treatment for substance use disorders: results from focus group discussions

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

A policy analysis exploring hepatitis C risk, prevention, testing, treatment and reinfection within Australia’s prisons

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

Developing E-cigarette friendly smoking cessation services in England: staff perspectives

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...

Authors: Hannah Farrimond and Charles Abraham

Correction to: Global and local perspectives on tobacco harm reduction: what are the issues and where do we go from here?

After publication of the original article [1], the authors noticed an error in the Competing interests section.

Authors: Sharon Cox and Lynne Dawkins

A pragmatic harm reduction approach to manage a large outbreak of wound botulism in people who inject drugs, Scotland 2015

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

Pain as a risk factor for substance use: a qualitative study of people who use drugs in British Columbia, Canada

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

Fentanyl-contaminated drugs and non-fatal overdose among people who inject drugs in Baltimore, MD

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

Changing patterns of first e-cigarette flavor used and current flavors used by 20,836 adult frequent e-cigarette users in the USA

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

Global and local perspectives on tobacco harm reduction: what are the issues and where do we go from here?

Authors: Sharon Cox and Lynne Dawkins

The unique contribution of e-cigarettes for tobacco harm reduction in supporting smoking relapse prevention

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 “here and now” of youth: the meanings of smoking for sexual and gender minority youth

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

“Who has ever loved a drug addict? It’s a lie. They think a ‘teja’ is as bad person”: multiple stigmas faced by women who inject drugs in coastal Kenya

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

Cost of provision of opioid substitution therapy provision in Tijuana, Mexico

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

Comparing risk environments for HIV among people who inject drugs from three cities in Northern Mexico

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

Toots, tastes and tester shots: user accounts of drug sampling methods for gauging heroin potency

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

Harm reduction and viral hepatitis C in European prisons: a cross-sectional survey of 25 countries

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

Prevalence of hepatitis C virus infection among prisoners in Iran: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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

‘Care and Prevent’: rationale for investigating skin and soft tissue infections and AA amyloidosis among people who inject drugs in London

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 gambling behaviour, product preferences, and perceptions of product harm: differences by age and gambling risk status

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

Origins in the USA in the 1980s of the warning that smokeless tobacco is not a safe alternative to cigarettes: a historical, documents-based assessment with implications for comparative warnings on less harmful tobacco/nicotine products

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...

Authors: Lynn T. Kozlowski

Electronic cigarette use in Greece: an analysis of a representative population sample in Attica prefecture

The purpose was to assess prevalence and correlates of electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use in Greece in 2017.

Authors: Konstantinos E. Farsalinos, Georgios Siakas, Konstantinos Poulas, Vassilis Voudris, Kyriakoula Merakou and Anastasia Barbouni

‘Worth the test?’ Pragmatism, pill testing and drug policy in Australia

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...

Authors: Andrew Groves

Expanding harm reduction to include fentanyl urine testing: results from a pilot in rural British Columbia

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

Lay responder naloxone access and Good Samaritan law compliance: postcard survey results from 20 Indiana counties

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

From problem people to addictive products: a qualitative study on rethinking gambling policy from the perspective of lived experience

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

Government and public health responses to e-cigarettes in New Zealand: vapers’ perspectives

The New Zealand (NZ) government is to lift the ban on the sale of nicotine for use in electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes).

Authors: Trish Fraser, Marewa Glover and Penelope Truman

Methamphetamine-type stimulant use in Lao PDR: qualitative findings from users aged 15–25 years in Vientiane Capital and Vientiane Province

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

Attitudes towards community gambling venues and support for regulatory reform: an online panel study of residents in New South Wales, Australia

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

Hospitalization among street-involved youth who use illicit drugs in Vancouver, Canada: a longitudinal analysis

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

A national public health programme on gambling policy development in New Zealand: insights from a process evaluation

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

Another frontier for harm reduction: contraceptive needs of females who inject drugs in Estonia, a cross-sectional study

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

“They accept me, because I was one of them”: formative qualitative research supporting the feasibility of peer-led outreach for people who use drugs in Dakar, Senegal

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

Prevalence and correlates of HIV infection among men who inject drugs in a remote area of Vietnam

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

High willingness to use rapid fentanyl test strips among young adults who use drugs

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

Scoping out the literature on mobile needle and syringe programs—review of service delivery and client characteristics, operation, utilization, referrals, and impact

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...

Authors: Carol Strike and Miroslav Miskovic

Evaluation of the Deadly Liver Mob program: insights for roll-out and scale-up of a pilot program to engage Aboriginal Australians in hepatitis C and sexual health education, screening, and care

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: a survey assessment of Kentucky community pharmacists’ willingness to participate in syringe/needle exchange

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

Options for reducing HIV transmission related to the dead space in needles and syringes

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 importance of drug checking outside the context of nightlife in Slovenia

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...

Authors: Matej Sande and Simona Šabić

Music festival attendees’ illicit drug use, knowledge and practices regarding drug content and purity: a cross-sectional survey

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

Knowledge and possession of take-home naloxone kits among street-involved youth in a Canadian setting: a cohort study

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

Opiate agonist treatment to improve health of individuals with opioid use disorder in Lebanon

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