Dr. Mary Clare Kennedy is a Research Scientist with the BC Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU). She is also a Canada Research Chair in Substance Use Policy and Practice Research.

Her research focuses on social-structural dimensions of health and interventions designed to improve health outcomes among people who use drugs, with a current focus on safe supply programs and supervised consumption services.

We asked Dr. Kennedy about her research and what needs to be done to improve outcomes for people who use drugs.

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself and your research.

I’m an Assistant Professor and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Substance Use Policy and Practice Research in the School of Social Work at UBC Okanagan. I’m also a Research Scientist with the BCCSU. My research is conducted in collaboration with health system and community partners, and currently mostly focuses on evaluating responses to the toxic drug crisis, including safe supply programs and innovations in supervised consumption service delivery. Through this work, we aim to better understand how these interventions function in real-world settings, their impacts, and ways to optimize them. The goal is to support more effective and adaptive responses to Canada’s most pressing public health crisis.

Q: What are three significant findings from your research evaluating supervised consumption sites (SCS) and overdose prevention sites (OPS)?

1) In a study of people who inject drugs in Vancouver, we found that people who used SCS on an at least weekly basis had approximately half the risk of dying from any cause compared to those who reported less than weekly or no SCS use.

2) In a later study, we found that scaling up OPS in Vancouver was associated with some important health benefits among people who inject drugs, including increased participation in addiction treatment, and decreases in public injection and syringe sharing.

3) In a qualitative study, we found that workers with lived/living experience of substance use were crucial to the successful implementation and delivery of OPS in Vancouver. Their involvement made services more welcoming and accessible, improved care quality, and both recognized and strengthened community expertise. At the same time, this work was emotionally demanding and often under-supported, highlighting the need to better care for people doing this critical frontline work.

Q: What do you think is a common misconception about SCS/OPS that research has proven to be incorrect?

People often assume that opening supervised consumption sites will negatively impact communities by increasing crime and disorder in the surrounding areas. In reality, studies have consistently found that crime rates don’t go up and that opening these services actually helps to reduce public drug use and syringe litter.

Q: Who do you collaborate with in your research and who would you like to work with more?

I work closely with people with lived/living experience of substance use, health authorities, healthcare professionals, and community-based organizations. These partnerships help ensure that our work is aligned with community priorities and positioned well to support policy and practice improvements. I also work alongside interdisciplinary academic colleagues across public health, social science and clinical fields, which allows for a more holistic approach to studying substance use and harm reduction.  Going forward, I’d like to build more partnerships in mid-sized and rural communities, where people are responding to the toxic drug crisis with remarkable creativity and determination in the face of unique challenges.

Q: If you could implement one change in care for people who use drugs, what would that be?

If we want to save lives, we need to stop letting stigma and politics stand in the way of progress. Too often, promising approaches are shut down, scaled back or never implemented because of moral judgement, misinformation, and political interference. If I could make one change, it would be to protect substance use care from these pressures so that there’s more space to innovate, evaluate, refine, and build upon what works.

Read more here:

• More about Dr. Kennedy's research
• Research highlight: "Overdose prevention sites provide wide range of health benefits: new research"
• Peer-reviewed publications by Dr. Kennedy